Rifugio 7° Alpini is Belluno’s balcony. It stands at 1,502 m (4,928 ft) in a hollow called Pis Pilon, directly beneath the south face of the Schiara — the highest mountain in the Belluno Dolomites National Park. You reach it on foot in about three hours from Case Bortot, walking up the Ardo valley. And it carries that name for a precise reason, one that involves the fallen of an Alpine regiment, seven hundred and thirty-five mule journeys, and an article the writer Dino Buzzati published in the Corriere della Sera in September 1951.
This guide covers both sides: the practical information you need to actually walk up there — trailhead, path, ascent, times, difficulty, season — and the story that makes this hut unlike any other in the Dolomites.
The hike at a glance
From Case Bortot to Rifugio 7° Alpini
| Start | Case Bortot, Bolzano Bellunese (Belluno) – 694 m |
| Finish | Rifugio 7° Alpini, Pis Pilon |
| Hut altitude | 1,502 m (4,928 ft) |
| Ascent | approx. 800–900 m |
| Time up | 2 h 30 – 3 h |
| Grade | E – hiking |
| Trail | CAI 501, Ardo valley |
| Best season | June to September (hut open in 2026 from 30 May to 27 September) |
Where is Rifugio 7° Alpini?
The hut sits at 1,502 metres in the locality of Pis Pilon, within the municipality of Belluno, in the Veneto region of northern Italy. This is the heart of the Belluno Dolomites National Park (Parco Nazionale Dolomiti Bellunesi), part of System 3 of the UNESCO World Heritage Dolomites, right below the south wall of the Schiara group.
The position explains a lot about the place. From the city of Belluno the Schiara is visible every single day: it is the home mountain, the wall that closes the Valbelluna to the north. The hut sits directly underneath it, in a grassy basin sheltered from winter avalanches — a location that was not chosen by chance, as we will see.
If you want the wider context, we have told the geological and human story of the Belluno Dolomites elsewhere on this site.
The hut belongs to the Belluno section of the Italian Alpine Club (CAI). For the 2026 season it is run by Chiara Dall’Armi and Fabrizio Gaspari.
How to get there from Case Bortot: CAI trail 501
The normal route — the one almost every walker uses — starts at Case Bortot, a handful of houses above Bolzano Bellunese, a hamlet of Belluno.
Driving to the trailhead
From Belluno follow signs for Agordo and climb to Bolzano Bellunese; from there a narrow road leads to Case Bortot, where there is a car park at the mouth of the Val d’Ardo. This is the official start of the route, at roughly 694 metres, and it is also the finishing point of the last stage of the Alta Via 1.
The walk
You take CAI trail 501, which climbs the Ardo valley through woodland. It is anything but monotonous: the path crosses the stream several times, and the valley floor is a catalogue of erosion forms, small waterfalls and potholes carved into the rock by water. It is one of the “wettest” ascents in the Belluno Dolomites, which makes it bearable even on hot days.
After about two thirds of the way the trail leaves the valley floor and tackles the section everyone calls “il Calvario” — the Calvary: a relentless series of steep switchbacks that lift you out of the forest. The name is earned. Then the ground opens, the Pis Pilon basin appears, and the hut materialises with the Schiara wall behind it.
The Bus del Buson variant
Just above Case Bortot a loop branches off to the Bus del Buson, a fossil canyon carved by the Ardo and later abandoned by the stream. It adds around 45 minutes and, if you have the time, it is the best possible way to begin: it is one of the most geologically curious corners of the park, and it also works as a short walk in its own right, without continuing to the hut.
Distance, time, ascent and difficulty
From the Case Bortot car park to the hut takes two and a half to three hours. Official sources give slightly different figures for the ascent: the National Park states 800 metres, the hut itself says 900. The difference comes from the constant ups and downs along the valley floor, which add height on top of the simple 694 m to 1,502 m difference. In practice, budget for around 900 metres of real climbing.
The grade is E — hiking in the Italian system: no cables, no exposure, but a long climb and a genuinely severe final section. Bring boots with a proper tread, enough water, and take care after rain, when the stream crossings and the smooth valley-floor rock become slippery.
The other approaches
Case Bortot is not the only way in, but it is by far the easiest. The alternatives are demanding and need experience:
- From the east — CAI trail 505, from Faè (A27 motorway exit, Longarone area) through the Cajada forest: about 700 m of ascent, 3–3.5 hours, grade EE.
- From the west — CAI trail 502, from La Stanga di Sedico through the Val de Piero, one of the wildest valleys in the park: about 1,400 m of ascent, 5.5–6 hours, grade EEA.
- From the north — Alta Via 1, descending from the Bivacco del Marmol along the Piero Rossi via ferrata: about 800 m of descent, 3 hours, grade EEA (harness, helmet and via ferrata set are mandatory).
The Schiara and the Gusela del Vescovà
The landscape
The Schiara and the Gusela del Vescovà
The Schiara reaches 2,565 metres and is the highest summit in the Belluno Dolomites National Park. It is a severe mountain, very vertical on its southern side, and for exactly that reason far less visited than the big tourist names of the Dolomites: anyone climbing to the 7° Alpini finds a wall that, seen from the hut, fills the sky.
On the ridge, detached from the rest of the mountain, rises the Gusela del Vescovà. It is a rock needle barely forty metres high, but the purity of its lines and the void around it have made it the symbol par excellence of Belluno mountaineering. The name comes from dialect: gusèla means needle. Locally it is also called Pónta de Priéta, the whetstone used for sharpening scythes.
The first attempts, in 1909, were made by Alpini officers and failed. The summit was reached on 14 September 1913 by Lieutenant Arturo Andreoletti with Francesco Jori: they raised the Italian flag, and the city of Belluno watched from below. Dino Buzzati, too, climbed it in his time.
It is this combination — an enormous wall, a rock needle recognisable from kilometres away, and a city that looks at them every day — that makes the Schiara and the Gusela the image the people of Belluno use to say “home”.
We have devoted a separate article to the Gusela del Vescovà and its story: the Gusèla del Vescovà.
Rifugio 7° Alpini and the Alta Via 1
The Alta Via 1 of the Dolomites is the most classic of all Dolomite treks: 125 kilometres over 12 stages, from Lake Braies in South Tyrol down to Belluno. The final four stages run inside the Belluno Dolomites National Park, from Passo Duran onward, through the Tamer, Castello di Moschesin, Pramper, Talvena and finally Schiara massifs.
Rifugio 7° Alpini is the last hut on the Alta Via 1. Anyone arriving here from above has a good week of walking behind them and nothing ahead but the final descent of the Val d’Ardo towards Case Bortot and Belluno. For many international hikers, this hut is the finish line.
One warning, though: reaching the hut from the north along the Alta Via is not simple hiking. The penultimate stage drops from the Bivacco del Marmol along the Piero Rossi via ferrata and is graded EEA. If you simply want to see the hut, walk up from Case Bortot.
The hut is also a stage on the long-distance Munich–Venice trek (German: Traumpfad München–Venedig), where it appears between stages 22 and 23, shortly before the walk reaches the plain.
Why is it called Rifugio 7° Alpini?
The name is not decorative. The hut is dedicated to the fallen of the 7th Alpini Regiment, the regiment historically tied to this province.
The 7th Alpini Regiment was raised on 1 August 1887. Over its history it has fielded battalions named after these very places — Feltre, Belluno, Pieve di Cadore, Cadore, Gemona — and served in Libya, the First World War, the Greek-Albanian front and 1943. It was disbanded on 12 September 1943 after the armistice and re-formed in 1953. Today the 7th Alpini Regiment is based in Belluno itself, at the “Salsa D’Angelo” barracks, within the “Julia” Alpine Brigade.
The bond between regiment and territory has never been abstract: for generations of Belluno families the 7th was the regiment of their sons, fathers and brothers. Naming the hut below the Schiara after those fallen soldiers meant putting a collective name on the home mountain.
There is also a very practical side to it. As Dino Buzzati reported in 1951, people had been discussing a hut on the Schiara for thirty years without ever managing to build one. It was the decision to dedicate it to the fallen of the 7th Alpini that unlocked the funding and got the work started. Without that name, the hut would in all likelihood not exist.
Building a hut at 1,500 metres
The site was identified by the Belluno climber Chino Viel, near the old Casera del Pis Pilón: close enough to the walls to serve climbers, yet sheltered from winter avalanches. Seventy years on, the choice has proved right.
The work went to the firm of Teobaldo and Giuseppe Bortoluzzi, at a cost of 3,800,000 lire. The building itself was finished at the end of August 1950; the interior fittings and installations — handled by the firm of the climber Attilio Tissi — took the following months. The hut was inaugurated in September 1951.
It has grown since: a chapel was added alongside in 1952, and a stone bivouac opened in 1969 for those arriving out of season. Today the hut offers around fifty beds in rooms of four to nine, with hot showers and a kitchen built on local produce.
The feat
A hut built with the help of mules
| Mule journeys | 735 |
| Hours of human labour | 1,440 |
| Loads carried on shoulders | 120 |
| Cost of the works | 3,800,000 lire |
| Building completed | August 1950 – inaugurated September 1951 |
The military took part too: the artillerymen of the 23rd Battery, Belluno Group and the Alpini of the 8th Regiment from Tolmezzo provided men and pack animals. In 1950 there were no helicopters serving mountain huts: everything you see up here — walls, roof, bunks, stoves — came up on a mule’s packsaddle or on somebody’s back.
The mules and the mountain
Those numbers are worth pausing over, because they describe something we now find hard to picture.
In 1950 none of what we take for granted in the mountains existed: no helicopters resupplying huts, no modern cableways, no service roads to altitude. To carry cement, lime, timber, window frames, sheet metal, bunks and stoves up to 1,502 metres there was exactly one available technology — the mule — and exactly one alternative when the mule could not pass: a man’s back.
For decades the mule was the real transport system of the Italian Alpine troops. Tough, patient, able to carry more than a hundred kilos on paths no vehicle can reach, sure-footed on unstable ground. Each climb to the 7° Alpini took hours, and each load was limited: hence the 735 journeys. Not a symbolic figure — an actual count, kept trip by trip.
And where the path was too narrow or too steep for a loaded animal, shoulders were the only option: 120 loads carried by hand, meaning 120 times somebody shouldered a weight and walked up the Val d’Ardo.
When you arrive at the hut after three hours with a day pack, that proportion is worth remembering. The same climb, 735 times, with a hundred kilos on the packsaddle.
Dino Buzzati and Rifugio 7° Alpini
Dino Buzzati (1906–1972) was from Belluno — born at San Pellegrino, on the edge of the city — and the Schiara was the mountain of his formation: he watched it as a boy, climbed it, and let it into his writing and his drawings. His literary mountains, including the imaginary ones surrounding Fort Bastiani in The Tartar Steppe, owe a great deal to these Belluno walls.
In September 1951 Buzzati covered the hut’s inauguration as a special correspondent for the Corriere della Sera. The article appeared on 25 September 1951 under a title that has stuck: “Non parlava inutilmente il vecchio generale degli alpini” — “The old Alpini general was not speaking in vain”.
That piece is the source of the most-quoted account of how the hut came to be: thirty years of inconclusive discussion, then the breakthrough when it was decided to dedicate it to the fallen of the 7th Alpini. Buzzati, who understood both mountains and the rhetoric that sometimes surrounds them, told the story with the attention of someone who knows the difference between empty words and words that produce something.
Walking up to the 7° Alpini today means, among other things, walking through a landscape that one of the great Italian writers of the twentieth century considered home.
When to go and practical tips
The hut opens for the summer season: in 2026 from 30 May to 27 September. The best window for the walk runs from June to September; early in the season snow can linger on the upper section, while September usually brings the clearest days and the best colour in the Val d’Ardo woods.
- Always book ahead if you plan to sleep there, especially on July and August weekends and at peak Alta Via 1 traffic. Phone: +39 0437 941631 (seasonal), +39 340 0016896 / +39 347 8801913; e-mail infosettimoalpini@gmail.com.
- Water: the Ardo valley floor is full of water, but do not count on reliable springs along the Calvario. Start with at least 1.5 litres per person.
- After rain the stream crossings and the smooth valley rock become slippery: consider postponing if there have been heavy storms in the previous hours.
- With children: the full route is long for short legs. The Bus del Buson loop from Case Bortot is a shorter, shaded and spectacular alternative.
- To combine: if you are building a multi-day itinerary, there are more ideas among our ten summer experiences in the Dolomites and the lakes of the Belluno Dolomites.
- This is a National Park: do not pick flowers or collect minerals, stay on the paths, keep dogs on a lead and carry your rubbish back down.
- Via ferratas: the Zacchi, Berti and Piero Rossi routes start here, but they are EEA itineraries with exposed sections and a classic circuit of 10–11 hours. Full equipment, technical competence and fitness are required. The hut offers a mountain-guide service and equipment rental.
Why this place explains Belluno
There are more famous huts, more photographed huts, huts that are far easier to reach. Very few, though, explain a city the way the 7° Alpini explains Belluno.
There is the mountain the people of Belluno see from their windows. There is the rock needle that became the civic symbol. There is the name of a regiment that took away generations of young men and gave them back — not all of them. There are the mules, which is to say the way this valley built its things when there was nothing else. There is the writer who drew from here an idea of mountains and of waiting that later travelled the world. And there is the very unrhetorical fact that the place is still kept going by a CAI section made of volunteers.
There is one more quality that counts for a lot today: there are no crowds here. The 7° Alpini is one of those places that still let you experience the Dolomites without overtourism, and it deserves a place alongside the other places in the Belluno Dolomites worth seeing at least once.
It is not a postcard hut. It is a hut that explains a territory. And that may be the best reason of all to set off from Case Bortot on a summer morning.
Frequently asked questions about Rifugio 7° Alpini
Where is Rifugio 7° Alpini?
It stands at 1,502 metres in the locality of Pis Pilon, in the municipality of Belluno (Veneto, Italy), at the foot of the Schiara’s south face, inside the Belluno Dolomites National Park.
How do you get to Rifugio 7° Alpini?
The normal route starts at Case Bortot, above Bolzano Bellunese near Belluno, and follows CAI trail 501 up the Ardo valley. There are also approaches on trail 505 (from Faè/Longarone through Cajada) and trail 502 (from La Stanga through the Val de Piero), both considerably harder.
How long does the hike take from Case Bortot?
Two and a half to three hours uphill for a fit walker, plus stops. Allow two to two and a half hours for the descent.
How much ascent is there?
About 800 metres according to the Belluno Dolomites National Park, about 900 according to the hut. The trailhead is at 694 m and the hut at 1,502 m; the ups and downs of the valley floor explain the difference.
Is the hike difficult?
The grade is E (hiking): no cables and no exposure, but the climb is long and the final section, known as “il Calvario”, is steep. Good fitness and proper footwear are needed.
Why is it called Rifugio 7° Alpini?
Because it is dedicated to the fallen of the 7th Alpini Regiment, raised in 1887 and today based in Belluno. It was the decision to name it after those soldiers that unlocked the post-war funding needed to build it.
When is the hut open?
During the summer season: in 2026 from 30 May to 27 September. Outside the season the stone bivouac opened in 1969 remains available.
Is Rifugio 7° Alpini part of the Alta Via 1?
Yes — it is the final hut on Alta Via 1 of the Dolomites, the 125-kilometre, 12-stage trek linking Lake Braies to Belluno. It is also a stage on the Munich–Venice trek.
Can you hike there with children?
The full route requires stamina and is not suitable for very young children. A good alternative from Case Bortot is the Bus del Buson loop: short, shaded and very scenic.
Cover image: Rifugio 7° Alpini below the south face of the Schiara — photo BjoeMu, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0. All photographs in this article come from Wikimedia Commons and are used in accordance with their respective licences, indicated in the captions.