“It’s a pity you’re here when the weather is so bad!” I had heard again and again upon arriving in northeastern Italy’s Südtirol province just as it was getting pounded with three days of rain, more than residents said they had seen all summer.

If ever a region were made for dramatic skies, it was this one. Its landscape is dominated by the Dolomites, which look less like mountains than a crowd of pious giants frozen in stone, some well over 9,000 feet high, reaching heavenward in one magnificent range. The often barren, jagged peaks shine white and gray by day, and glow pink at twilight. Le Corbusier called them the most beautiful architecture in the world.