The Dolomites (also known as Pale Mountains) are a mountain range in the eastern Alps, in Italy, conventionally bounded on the north by Rienza and Val Pusteria, west dall'Isarco and the Adige valley with the same name, from the Brenta to the south from which Lagorai chain comes off the edge of the Val di Fiemme and east of the Piave and Cadore. The existence of the Dolomites Oltrepiave, located east of the river Piave, in the provinces of Belluno, Udine and Pordenone (and even part of Austria, Lower Carinthia), the Brenta Dolomites, located in western Trentino, Small Dolomites, between Trentino and Veneto, highlights the purely conventional nature of this territorial demarcation. View from the ridge west of the Marmolada. On the horizon, right and left of Punta Penia, the Pale di San Martino, the Latemar, the Rosengarten, Sassolungo, Sella Ampezzo and the Dolomites

The area extends between the Dolomites of Belluno province - which is the most important - Bolzano, Trento, Udine and Pordenone.
The Dolomites are named after the French naturalist Dolomieu Dieudonné (1750-1801) who first studied the particular type of rock predominates in the region (double carbonate of calcium and magnesium). The genesis of this type of carbonate rocks begins through the accumulation of shells, corals and algae calcareee and tropical marine environments (similar to the current coral reef in the Bahamas, Australia and Eastern Europe). In particular, these accumulations took place during the Triassic Period about 250 million years ago (the genus Homo appeared 3 million years ago), in areas with the latitude and longitude very different from the current location of the Dolomites, where there were seas and warm shallow. The bottom of the seas piled hundreds of feet of sediment that turn under their own weight losing internal fluids and becoming rock. Subsequently, the clash between the European plate and the African Plate (Alpine orogeny) brought out these rocks rise above 3000 m above sea level.


The current landscape, angular and full of gradients, appears to the eye of tourists as a crucible scatter of rocks that has nothing to do with coral reefs. To determine this change were: the bent and broken rocks along slip planes (faults), to which the motions are so many earthquakes, volcanic explosions episodic and related deposits; differential erosion related to weather and plans to inherent weakness in the rocks .

The elevation of dolomite rocks is still in progress. Today the Dolomites show the whiteness of carbonate reef, the sharpness of the rocks involved in recent orogeny, engravings of powerful exogenous agents (glaciers, wind, rain, cold / hot ...). At least six natural parks protect this special nature and various ad hoc committees are involved in proposing the Dolomites as World Heritage.


In the future geology of the Dolomites will continue to incorporate new areas of growth driven by the clash between the rocks, European and African plates (like the Himalayas), the disappearance of this thrust will result in the predominance of exogenous agents that tend to smooth and soften the mountain ( as happens in the Urals).

On 26 June 2009, in Seville, the Dolomites have been included in the UNESCO World Heritage List as a natural good, with the following statement of outstanding universal value:
"The nine mountain ranges that make up the Dolomites Heritage includes a series of mountain landscapes unique in the world of exceptional natural beauty. Their peaks, spectacularly vertical, pale, have a variety of sculptural forms extraordinary worldwide. These mountains also have a set of values of international importance for earth sciences. The quantity and concentration of carbonate formations extremely diverse in the world is extraordinary, while the geology exposed in superbly, providing a glimpse of marine life in the Triassic period, following the biggest extinction ever remembered in the history of life on Earth . The sublime landscapes, monuments and color charges of the Dolomites have always attracted a crowd of passengers and were the source of innumerable scientific and artistic interpretations of their values.