A lake shore hotel built for the Belle Époque, where Queen Margherita once stayed. In 1949 a diocese bought it and turned it into a clinic where mountain air was the medicine, first for tuberculosis, then for children’s asthma, until it closed in 2022.
At a glance
On the south shore of Lake Misurina, at 1,754 metres in the Dolomites, stands a five-storey building that has had two long lives. Built in 1896–99 as a luxury hotel, it briefly hosted Queen Margherita of Savoy and changed its name more than once before the Second World War. In 1949 or 1950 the Diocese of Parma bought it and reopened it as the Istituto Pio XII, a mountain clinic that treated tuberculosis and then, from 1970, children’s asthma — drawing on the same clean, high-altitude air that had once been sold to hotel guests as a health resort. It closed at the end of 2022, after 73 years as a hospital.
Key facts
- Where: Via Monte Piana 18, Misurina, Auronzo di Cadore (Belluno), on the south shore of the lake
- Built: 1896–1899, as a luxury hotel
- Names as a hotel: opened as an unnamed grand hotel; became the Grand Hotel Savoia after Queen Margherita’s stay in 1900; later the Grand Hotel delle Alpi e Misurina
- Hotel years: 1899–1940
- As a clinic: Istituto Pio XII, run by the Diocese of Parma through the Opera Diocesana San Bernardo, 1949/1950–2022
- Treated: tuberculosis (1950s–1970), then childhood asthma (1970–2022), one of only a handful of such high-altitude respiratory clinics in the world
- Not to be confused with: the hotel called “Grand Hotel Misurina” trading today, a different and unrelated building on the north shore of the lake
From grand hotel to children’s clinic
A group of local investors — Angelo Barnabò, Osvaldo Bombassei, Vittore Da Vià, Giovanni Perini, Aldo Apollonio and Joseph Rohracher — built the hotel between 1896 and 1899 on the south shore of Lake Misurina, then a remote Alpine beauty spot only beginning to draw wealthy visitors. For the period it was strikingly modern: running water and electric light on every floor, a hydraulic lift, reading rooms. In 1900, months after King Umberto I was assassinated, the widowed Queen Margherita spent a month there, and the hotel took her name, the Grand Hotel Savoia. After the First World War — during which the building served as an Italian military command post for the fighting on nearby Monte Piana, and was damaged — it reopened once more, this time as the Grand Hotel delle Alpi e Misurina, and continued as a hotel until 1940.
In 1949 or 1950 — sources give both years — the Diocese of Parma, acting through the priest Padre Paolino Quattrocchi and the Pontificia Opera Assistenza, bought the building and reopened it under a new name and a new purpose: the Istituto Pio XII, named for the reigning pope. Misurina’s altitude and clean air, the very qualities that had drawn Belle Époque hotel guests, were now prescribed as treatment. For its first two decades the clinic treated tuberculosis; from 1970 it specialised in childhood asthma, eventually running around 100 beds and becoming, alongside similar clinics at Briançon in France, Davos in Switzerland and in Denver, Colorado, one of the few places in the world offering mountain-altitude treatment for children’s respiratory disease. The institute closed at the end of 2022, its finances no longer sustainable with a single patient in residence.
What you see
The building rises five or six storeys in pale render, with dark green shutters on every window and a steep hipped roof with dormers — the silhouette of a Belle Époque Alpine grand hotel rather than a hospital. An external metal fire escape, added on one flank, is the one visible sign of its later institutional use. Seen from the far shore of the lake, with the grey walls of the Dolomites rising behind it, it is easy to understand why both a queen and, later, a diocese chose this particular view for rest and recovery.
Getting there
Lake Misurina is on the SS48 road between Auronzo di Cadore and Cortina d’Ampezzo, reached by car or seasonal bus. The former Istituto Pio XII stands on the south shore; the building is closed and its future use had not been decided at the time of writing.
Sources
- Wikipedia (English), “Grand Hotel Misurina” — on the hotel’s construction, Queen Margherita’s stay, and the sale to the Diocese of Parma.
- Ecomuseo Dolomiti-Piave, entry on the Grand Hotel Misurina.
- Fondo Ambiente Italiano (FAI), “Istituto Pio XII al Lago di Misurina”.
- Ospedali d’Italia, “Misurina — Istituto Pio XII”.
- QdpNews, 29 September 2022, on the closure of the Istituto Pio XII.
- Luigi De Marchi, who photographed the building.
Gallery
Photographs by Luigi De Marchi.
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See this place and what’s around it →Record researched and written by Luigi De Marchi for Cultural Heritage Online, 2026.
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