San Cassiano sits in a fold of the Dolomites, larch and limestone on every side. The hotel at its centre has a new name and the same quiet.
The Rosa Alpina has stood in San Cassiano for generations. The Pizzinini family ran it as one of the landmarks of Alta Badia, a wood-panelled house known across South Tyrol. It closed for a long renovation and has reopened under Aman, the brand’s first resort in the Italian mountains.
The house
Jean-Michel Gathy designed the interiors. He has worked with Aman for years and the hand is familiar: pale wood, stone, long lines of sight to the peaks. The building keeps its alpine bones. Fifty-one rooms and suites face either the village or the forest, with the Dolomite summits filling the windows.
The outdoor pool above the valley, Aman Rosa Alpina
Summer
From June to October the resort works as a base for the mountains. Trails leave from the door. Guests climb to the ridgelines at sunrise, cycle the passes, ride the singletrack down through the meadows. San Cassiano sits inside Dolomiti Superski, so in the cold months the same ground turns to more than twelve hundred kilometres of piste.
The building keeps its alpine bones. The peaks do the rest.
The Splendid EditThe table
Dining runs across several rooms. The Grill serves family-style Italian on a terrace over the valley. Enju does Japanese shabu shabu, a long thread in the Aman kitchen. Il Salotto is the lounge bar, and breakfast comes in the Heritage Room, looking into the forest.
Larch turning above San Cassiano in Badia
The spa
The Aman Spa holds seven treatment rooms and three pools, one of them outdoor and open to the mountain air. Treatments draw on the alpine setting. After a day on the trails, it is the reason to come back down.
Il Salotto, the lounge bar
Getting there
San Cassiano is a drive from three airports: two and a half hours north of Venice, an hour and a half from Bolzano, two hours south of Innsbruck. Helicopter transfers run from each, and from Milan in a little over an hour. The road in climbs through the Badia valley, and the peaks rise the whole way.
The verdict
Aman could have built something new in the Dolomites. Instead it took a house with a name and three generations behind it and kept the walls standing. The peaks were always the point. Now there are fifty-one quiet rooms from which to watch them.
Aman Rosa Alpina reopened in San Cassiano in Badia, in the Italian Dolomites, in 2026. Summer rates and reservations through aman.com.
Photography courtesy of Aman — Aman Rosa Alpina, Dolomites