History

A maso is the basic unit of Alpine farming — a house, a barn, and the fields and woods that fed a family. Maso Fratton Valaja, above Spormaggiore at the foot of the Brenta Dolomites, was one such holding, worked for generations and then, like many mountain farms, abandoned. By the late twentieth century it had stood empty for decades and the land was returning to scrub.

In 1993 the Fondo Ambiente Italiano bought the maso from the Endrizzi brothers, with a donation from Bayer Italia. Instead of restoring it as a museum, the FAI joined the WWF in a different aim: to recover the land itself. Over the following years some twelve hectares were brought back — orchards replanted, beech woods tended — and from 2000 an organic farm took over the daily work.

The result is less a monument than a managed landscape. The maso sits at the margins of the Adamello Brenta Natural Park, in the WWF-affiliated Valle dello Sporeggio oasis, and the fruit trees and woods it tends are part of what sustains the brown bears that still live in the Brenta. It is one of the FAI’s alpine properties, kept by being worked.