A special place, with a special story.
A rock face rescued from oblivion and brought back to life thanks to the passion of those who loved it. Today, the Falesia Dimenticata is the first example in Italy of a natural crag that has become a common good, but its story began long before.
At the end of the 1980s, when sport climbing was starting to spread among enthusiasts, it was the home crag for the young people of San Lorenzo Dorsino. Before long, forty routes were equipped, and climbers began to crowd that unique shield of rock made of conglomerate: sand and marine stones fused together by time. At its feet, a meadow crossed by a spring of fresh water.
But that crag stood on private land. In the 1990s, the owner, annoyed by the youngsters arriving in vans, decided to close it. He removed the bolts from the wall and what had been a small homeland of climbing became only a memory. For everyone, from then on, it was the Forgotten Crag.
With time, nature reclaimed it. Yet the nostalgia of those who had lived it never faded. As often happens with love stories, this one too took a long path, only to return.
In 2016, thanks to a visionary idea and a crowdfunding campaign that involved more than 400 people, the story came back to life. The Dolomiti Open Association, committed to making the mountains accessible and inclusive, bought the land with the wall, the meadow and the spring. Volunteers and enthusiasts cleaned everything up: the rock could breathe again. The historic routes were rebolted and new ones were created, accessible also to people with physical disabilities.
In 2024, a second crowdfunding made it possible to expand the area and open new routes. Today there are almost 60 routes, for every level: from beginners all the way to experts capable of tackling grade 8a. Every year, more than 7,000 climbers from all over the world choose to come here to San Lorenzo Dorsino, to the place where the holey rock has become everyone’s again.
