Ladin Mugums and Stuas

Left: B&B Garni Delta dining room, stube-like. Right: Recreated stube in the Tiroler Volkskunstmuseum in Innsbruck.


In the Val Badia (or Alta Badia / South Tyrol) the “stua” (or “stube” in German) in a Ladin house is a sort of living room built of wood, with a low ceiling, and where you find a large stove called a “mugum” in traditional Ladin house. The stove usually has a barrel roof and concave tiles for better heat distribution. Sometimes the stove is made of ceramic and can look quite elegant. In traditional Ladin houses the mugum is sort of the barrel-shaped object half sunk into an internal wall of the house. In modern houses the shapes can vary. Often there is a bench around the mugum and sometimes a bed on top. Besides the cooking stove in the kitchen this was the only heating source in older Laden homes.

One of the pictures shown is a recreated stube in the Tiroler Volkskunstmuseum in Innsbruck. It shows a white and green tiled mugum in the corner of the room with benches around it. The second picture is from the B&B Garni Delta’s dining room. We stayed at this B&B during our time in Val Badia. This example is a more modern take on the mugum.

Colfosco Bed and Breakfast Hotel - Nature Hotel Delta

The hotel Garni Delta is located in Colfosco (location) in the Val Badia (also called South Tyrol). Colfosco is located in the southern part of the Val Badia that is higher than the northern part and so is also referred to as Alta Badia. We can’t say enough nice things about this hotel, but we’ll try. First, our room (a superior facing east) is the best designed room we’ve stayed in. There was plenty of cabinet storage, comfortable beds, a large window and glass door leading to a balcony, a circular work table, and internet! Second, the folks there are super nice: Ricardo, Manuela, and Stefano Afreider. They’ve helped us in every conceivable way with maps, advice, 4pm hot chocolate, and friendly chit chat. Third, the breakfast was just right, not too big or too small, and items rotating in and out according to season. Fourth, the location, above Colfosco, commands an incredible view. You can sit here all day just watching the weather changes against the backdrop of the mountains. Fifth, the cost is reasonable compared to what we’d seen elsewhere. Sixth, they opened June 1st this year which is quite early in the summer high season which really starts the 1st of July. Many hotels and B&Bs only start opening in mid to late June.

By the way, “garni” is the German word for a bed and breakfast hotel. You’ll see this word quite a bit travelling around the Val Badia.



Note: Some years after our first time there, the hotel changed its name to Nature Hotel Delta and as of 2018 they have expanded with more rooms.

Where’s Your Napkin?

It seems that we have the habit of putting our napkins on our lap while eating. In Italy napkins are left on the table quite often while eating. Once, we were in Piedmonte visiting some relatives and upon sitting at the dinner table we started serving ourselves appetizers. Our hostess came toward the table looking alarmed because she thought that she had forgotten to give us napkins. She couldn’t see that we had placed them on our lap. I personally perfer napkins on the lap. I suppose one benefit of keeping it on the table is that it never drops on the floor as always seems to happen when the napkin is in your lap.

Scorpion in Florence?

Forgot to post this but in Florence we once had an interesting visitor: a scorpion. We found him under a wet sponge in the kitchen. It kind of freaked us out. We photographed it and put it outside. It was pretty small, about 1.5cm. We confirmed with WhatsThatBug and they said it was a scorpion. Still, would say the mosquitoes in Florence are still more annoying.

Ladin Museum in San Martino

The Ladin Museum in San Martino (loc) might qualify as one of the best museums we have ever seen. The subject: the Ladin people and their culture and history. What makes this museum shine is a combination of factors.

- The history of the Ladin people is interesting because of the way they lived on and with the land, how they built their society and villages around little “viles”, and how they divided up farmland fairly so everyone had good farming land.

- The history of the Ladin culture is also interesting in that it intersects with many different waves of history so that in some ways you are taking a stroll through time as you learn about the Ladin. From the early alpine tribe called the Raetians (last centuries BC) who mark the start of the Ladin, to the Romanization of the Ladin, through all the countless monarchies that “owned” this area, through to WWI and WWII, it’s amazing that the Ladin culture and language has maintained itself so successfully.

- The museum is located in a very interesting old castle house in which you slowly make your way through various exhibits. The oldest part of the castle dates back to 1230.

- The audio guide for the museum is probably one of the best we’ve experienced. It’s sensitive to proximity so tracks automatically start when you are in a room or near an exhibit. The audio guide vignettes are either a story or in a question / answer format. In the story format, you walk into a “period” room (like a toy studio) and you are suddenly listening to a conversation between a mother, father, and son about how many (traditional) dolls would be carved and sold to support the family. Through the conversation you get a real sense of what life was like for them. Many rooms are tied together thematically around a typical Ladin family who might have lived on the premise. In the other format (question/answer) you have an interview with an expert on subject like geology or history. The questions the interviewer asks are exactly what you would ask yourself.

We spent 4 hours there and as we left they remarked that we had spent quite a bit of time there – a bit unusual I guess but definitely worth it. And the sad part is we didn’t even take time in the language “lab” part. So we could have spent another hour, but we were starving.

You can climb to the top of the tower and they have telescope devices which on first glance seem to just give views of the countryside, but as soon as you approach them and look through them, you view a narrated story about the view the telescope is focused on. Very clever.

Probably the most memorable exhibit was a room you walk into, sit down and suddenly find yourself in the middle of a dispute between the Bishop of Bressanone and the nuns of Castelbadia convent on whether the peasants should pay their tithes to the nuns. There are four characters in the conversation: Gregor Von Heimburg (a statesman), Kardinal Nilolaus Cusanus (Bishop of Bressanone), Verena von Stuben (Abbess of Castelbadia), and Herzog Sigmund von Tirol (a duke). The conflict came to a head in the Battle of Moreo in 1458. Each character is part of a painting and when they talk, the painting (really, a large LCD screen) comes to life. Again, very, very well done.

The Ladin Language

We just arrived in the Dolomites. In just a couple hundred kilometers from Piedmonte everything changes: scenery, food, and language. In particular, the languages spoken where we are staying in Colfosco (loc) are German, Italian and Ladin. When people are speaking Ladin it seems familiar to us, sharing some words and pronunciation with Italian, but we couldn’t hope to reply back. While here we speak either Italian or English.

Colfosco is a town in the province of Bolzano in the Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol region of Italy. It is more or less in the heart of the area where the Ladin language is spoken. Ladin is spoken in several municipalities throughout Trentino-Alto Adige as well as a few municipalities in the Veneto region. It's somewhat complicated understanding the administrative borders of this area of Italy given that there are communes, municipalities, autonomous regions (like Trentino-Alto Adige), and “non-autonomous” regions (like Veneto) and how these administrative borders overlap with where the Ladin language is spoken.

In the graphic, the names of the towns and areas are written in Ladin. Bulsan for Bolzano and Belun for Belluno, for example.