Where ancient tradition rules

Novice skier Amy McPherson discovered a friendly place to learn this new skill at a village in the mountains of Friuli-Venezia Giulia. But the skiing was not what captured her heart there…

Woodworker Hermann Plozzer specialises in making masks

Legend has it that the village was founded in the 12th century by two defecting German soldiers

Entering Lower Sauris

Image © Getty

The isolated mountain village of Sauris

Image © Getty

Let me begin by admitting that skiing is not my forté. I do, however, have a fascination with snow and thought that perhaps it was time to improve my skills. I’d come to Sauris, a small comunein theFriuli-Venezia Giulia region, on the recommendation of friends back home, who told me that there would be different levels of ski areas here, and one particularly family-friendly slope that even I would have no trouble with.

“It’s not very difficult,” said Veronica Schneider, my ski instructor, as she gently guided me onto the pull-lift and then patiently glided with me down the slope. It took a couple of goes, but I soon started to relax and was able to enjoy the storybook atmosphere of the mountainous surroundings dotted with traditional wooden houses. Even so, after the fifth run, I realised that I was simply not built for snow sports.

Luckily for me, however, Sauris isn’t just a place to ski. In fact, it was named by the United Nations World Tourism Organisation as one of the 32 Best Tourist Villages in the World in 2022, in recognition of the ancient traditions that are actively maintained here. So, I hung up the ski boots and went exploring.

Saurano is a dialect of Tyrolean Bavarian spoken just in this area. Shown here is a collection of poems written in Saurano in the 19th century

Images by Amy McPherson unless otherwise stated

LANGUAGE AND CULTURE

Sauris – or Zahre as it is called in the local German dialect – is a two-centred village community in a remote valley in the Carnian Alps, comprising Sauris di Sopra and Sauris di Sotto – Upper Sauris and Lower Sauris. Getting here requires a long, slow drive along winding mountain roads with tunnels that were cut by manual labour during the Mussolini years. So even today, Sauris is still rather isolated.