Lerpa

The municipal statute lists 15 hamlets from west to east, and Lerpa is the first. It is not, however, one of the 14 medieval farmsteads from which the village grew: it developed from the 1910s around the chapel of St John the Baptist, of 1815, and took its present form from 1983, with a tourist complex of seven buildings. The land-use plan defines it as “an entirely new settlement”. The name comes from the larch and from the stream that crosses it.

Regional road 355 runs through the middle of the settlement: it is the entrance to the village for those coming up from Santo Stefano di Cadore, and the petrol station is here. The upper part, towards Plotta, climbs the slope: the houses stand between 1,214 m and 1,255 m. By number of buildings it is one of the four largest hamlets, with Bach, Granvilla and Cima.

On 21 December, according to our calculation, the hamlet's map point receives about 4 h 25 min of direct sun, without a break, from roughly 10:20 to 14:45. In the morning the shade is that of Col dei Mughi, the hill opposite, across the Piave; the afternoon ends early because the sun drops behind the Terze, which are close from here. On 21 March the figure is about 10 h 15 min, on 21 June about 14 h 10 min: in summer Lerpa is among the hamlets that receive most.

You see Monte Siera at an angle, towards the south-east, the Clap group due south and the Terze to the west; behind, steep, Monte Ferro. Monte Peralba cannot be seen.

It is a calculation on the terrain model, under a clear sky, for one point: it takes no account of trees or neighbouring houses, and the upper part of the hamlet is not the same as the part on the road. Before buying it is worth looking at the house on a clear December day.

There is almost nothing traditional: the published descriptions recognise one nineteenth-century house at Plotta and twentieth-century barns. The rest is recent masonry construction: apartments in holiday residences built from the 1980s, apartment blocks, small detached houses. They are often small units, with shared parts, and energy performance varies a great deal from one building to another: read it on the certificate, do not assume it.

In listings “Borgo al Sole” is the name of a complex in Lerpa, not of a hamlet. Among the listings for Sappada there are also timeshare shares: they are not homes in full ownership but rights of use by turn, and they are valued differently.

The land-use plan provides for new building above the settlement, to be carried out under a private plan: detached houses, with a pitched roof and the ridge running north to south. Nearly all of Lerpa lies in the zone the Italian Revenue Agency calls “central”, where standard homes are valued between €2,000/m² and €3,000/m² (OMI, normal condition, gross floor area). Some street numbers on the uphill side of the road, however, fall in the rural zone, where the official value is lower: the zone of a house in Lerpa has to be checked address by address, and a range is not the price of a house.

The hamlet has the bus stop, on the regional road, and the petrol station. For everything else you walk: the nearest bakery is in Granvilla; the town hall, post office and pharmacy are in Bach. The lifts are all far away: the nearest are the Eiben chairlift and the Campetti, while the chairlift to Sappada 2000 is on the other side of the village. In winter Lerpa lives by ski bus or by car: the ski bus, free for ski-pass holders, stopped in the hamlet in the last published timetables, but stops and times should be checked again each season.