“Old-fashioned in the best sense of the word,” was the verdict of our author Wolfgang Jean Stock at the time. The “On the road” section started in the Baumeister in the April 1997 issue and presented Clemens Holzmeister’s Hotel Drei Zinnen as the first hostel. It has since been carefully modernized: and is therefore worth a visit again 25 years later.
Rain from early to late. The weather forecast on WetterOnline does not look good for the tour to the Dreizinnenhütte in the Sesto Dolomites. However, Waltraud Watschinger doesn’t even have to look at the sky: “You can count on it staying dry until 6 pm!” And indeed it did: When the thunderstorm starts at 6.10 p.m., we are back safe and sound at the Hotel Drei Zinnen and served homemade cake in the games room under Rudolf Stolz’s cheerful figurines.
However, Ms. Watschinger doesn’t just know about rainfall: She knows the preferences of the regular guests at table 27 as well as the stories of former visitors, including Fred Zinnemann, five-time Oscar winner from Hollywood, and Julius Cardinal Döpfner. His letter of thanks from 19.8.1963 for “such beautiful vacation accommodation” is stuck in the house’s leather-bound photo album. She is also sure which carpenter can restore Tyrolean parlor furniture from the 1920s and 1930s and how the new fire alarm system works.
She has been running the Drei Zinnen in the Sesto district of Moos since 1983. Since the annexation to Italy after the First World War, the hotel has had “Tre Cime” written above the year 1929 on the front entrance. It was built by her grandfather, the mayor of the village was in short a far-sighted man: Hans Watschinger used a lodging license from 1811 to build a hotel that “was to join the ranks of the few famous Dolomite hotels”. At least. And it was to be designed by none other than Clemens Holzmeister – the Austrian architect and teacher who briefly ran an office with Luis Trenker in Bolzano and whose brother was the local doctor in Sesto.
And Holzmeister, who is memorialized in Ankara and whose catalog raisonné lists around 700 buildings at the time of his death in 1983, did not make it easy for himself: “The Alpenhotel’s special building mass alone makes it awkward to integrate into the townscape.”
Accordingly, it is well-proportioned, both inside and out, with six storeys on the slope. The 35 rooms are accessed up and down the stairs, while the cozy and glamorous public roomsare located at street level. The American Bar and the dining room, also painted by Rudolf Stolz, with its figurative wooden chandeliers. The hall and the parlor as well as the playroom and reading room were also designed by Rudolf Stolz. The heated outdoor swimming pool was also a sensation at the opening. When Heinrich Harrer, who later moved to Tibet, was hired as the hotel’s own ski instructor in 1937, the hotel and the whole area developed from a summer resort into a winter domicile.
But Mrs. Watschinger isto thank for themagic of the building today: she maintains the overall work of art of form, function and color, so that everything from the logo to the furniture, from the silverware to the art is original. The Bolzano architect Christoph Mayr Fingerle, who died in 2020, adapted the bathrooms to modern requirements and transformed the dance bar into a fine spa. That future interventions will also be implemented carefully and appropriately – “you can rely on that!” And that is still and always worth a visit.
Hotel Drei Zinnen
St. Josef Street 28,
Sesto
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