Cortina d'Ampezzo, the Queen of the Dolomites

Cortina d'Ampezzo has been inhabited for close to a thousand years, but it didn't become what it's known for today — alpine glamour, serious skiing, thin bright air — until the second half of the 1800s, when mountaineers and wealthy tourists started making the trip up into the Dolomites specifically to see it.

It was actually awarded the 1944 Winter Olympics first, which never happened — the war cancelled them. Cortina finally got its Games in 1956, and it mattered beyond the medals: it was the first Winter Olympics ever broadcast live, carried to television audiences across eight European countries. Seventy years later, the Olympic flame came back to Cortina in 2026, the same town hosting again.

That's the altitude this watch is named for — thin air, long sightlines, a place built for precision because the terrain doesn't forgive guesswork. Cortina Chrono runs a VK67 meca-quartz in a tan colorway, legible at a glance, the way you'd want a watch to be if you were actually up there.

I actually have my own connection to Cortina, through the other side of what I do. When the Olympics came back there in 2026, I worked the broadcast as a mix engineer — a satellite feed carrying the coverage back to the control room in New York. I never set foot on the mountain, but for those weeks Cortina came through my console every day, live, the same discipline this watch is named for: get it right the first time, because there's no second take.

— Matt