Bach

The name comes from the stream: Bach in German, Pòch in Plodarisch, the local German dialect. This is the hamlet of the municipal seat: the town hall has been here since 1953; before that it was in Mühlbach, in the school building. Around it are the post office, the pharmacy, the library, the tourist office, the supermarket and most of the shops.

Bach differs from the hamlets on the old road because it burned. The fire of 13 September 1908 started in a hay barn; the rebuilding redrew the settlement further down the slope, in three parallel rows of masonry houses, with two rows of farm buildings above them that in recent decades have almost all become dwellings. The “new road” of 1922, today regional road 355, runs between the second and third rows: it is the reason the services are here, and also the reason for the traffic in the busy weeks.

The municipal land-use plan does not treat this rebuilding as ordinary construction: it calls it “rifabbrico”, places it in a historic zone of its own and recognises its value as a record of its time.

On 21 December, according to our calculation, the hamlet's map point receives about 5 h 20 min of direct sun: it arrives at around 10:00, when it clears Monte Siera, and leaves at around 15:20, behind the Terze peaks. On that date only Pill, the hamlet next door, receives more. On 21 March the figure is about 10 h 35 min, on 21 June about 13 h 55 min.

This is a calculation on the terrain model, under a clear sky, for one point: it sees neither trees nor buildings. In Bach that matters more than elsewhere, because the houses stand in rows one in front of the other: in December the sun is only 20° above the horizon and a building casts a shadow almost three times its own height. A ground floor with a house in front can be in shade even here; the lower rows towards the Piave get a little less sun than the upper ones. What to do is simple: look at the house on a clear winter day, or ask the people who live there what time the sun reaches the balcony.

The view is to the south, in the same direction as the sun. To the south-east is Monte Siera, the mountain that dominates the village; straight ahead, the Clap group; to the south-west the Terze, behind which the sun sets in winter. Behind the hamlet rises the slope of Monte Ferro. Monte Peralba (2,694 m) cannot be seen from Bach: it is visible only from Cima Sappada.

These are the peaks the calculation gives as visible from the hamlet's map point. What you see from a particular window depends on what stands in front of it: the land-use plan protects the valley-floor meadows, not the view from an individual house.

Mostly apartments: in the houses of the rebuilding, in apartment blocks from the second half of the twentieth century, in attics, in a few buildings from the 1990s with a basement room and a garage. Of the old timber, one house and one barn with hayloft remain, and on the old road the chapel of St Anthony of Padua, from 1726: it is the oldest chapel in Sappada. The buildings stand between 1,235 m and 1,268 m.

Listings sometimes say “Bach alta” (upper Bach): it is not an official place name, it means the rows higher up, towards the old road. In Sappada an address is “Borgata” plus the house number, and the same name covers the part on the regional road and the part above it: always ask where the house actually stands.

For the Italian Revenue Agency Bach is the “central” zone of the municipality: standard homes are valued between €2,000/m² and €3,000/m² (OMI, normal condition, gross floor area). It is a range estimated on completed sales, not the price of a house; asking prices in listings are a different measure and sit higher.

From Bach you can do on foot almost everything you need in a week's holiday and much of what you need to live here: food shopping, pharmacy, post office, doctor, nursery school; the primary and lower secondary schools are in neighbouring Mühlbach. The stop for the scheduled buses, to Tolmezzo and to Calalzo, is in the hamlet.

What is not within walking distance: a large supermarket (for the big shop people drive down to Santo Stefano di Cadore), upper secondary schools, a hospital. Parking, in the peak weeks, is the problem of the whole centre; the land-use plan provides for an underground car park with a small market square, but we cannot say whether or when it will be built.

The Campetti, the two drag lifts of the nursery slopes, are on the meadows below the houses: the upper end, on the village side, is a few minutes' walk away. Next to them is Nevelandia, the snow play park. For anyone learning to ski, or with small children, it is the most convenient position in the village.

For the chairlifts you have to travel: Sappada 2000 starts from Kratten, further east; Pian dei Nidi from the level ground below Soravia; Monte Siera from Cima Sappada; Eiben from across the Piave. Ski-pass holders use the free ski bus, whose stops and timetable should be checked again each season. We do not write “linked ski area”: no ski-in, ski-out connection between the sectors is documented. The cross-country trail, 13 km in all, runs along the valley floor: the stadium is on the level ground below the hamlets from Hoffe to Soravia.