The legend of King Ombro and his beautiful daughter Ombretta, of Sottoguda

Upstream of the village of Sottoguda, at the entrance of the Serrai, it is said that there was a gigantic bronze portal from which extends a rich and fairytale kingdom. It was the reign of King Ombro, who lived in a magnificent alabaster castle that could not be seen by ordinary people because they could not cross the portal.

King Ombro had a beautiful daughter, Ombretta, as beautiful as joyful and loved by all the citizen of the kingdom. The young woman had all the attentions and admiration of the princes visiting the castle, who remained enchanted by her beauty and her pure spirit.

Ombretta had a stepmother who was envious of her stepdaughter and saw in her an obstacle for the future of her daughters, who did not seem to be very attractive.

As time went on, the wicked queen realized more and more that it was almost impossible to find a prince willing to marry one of her daughters and her hatred and envy towards the beautiful Ombretta grew.

One day, a prince who was in love with Ombretta, decided to come forward and asked his daughter's hand to King Ombro. The King was happy and consented to the wedding.

The news spread throughout the fabulous kingdom, even outside its borders, immediately began the preparations, were called nobles and royals of the region, everyone had to be present. It must have been a marriage worthy of the beauty of Ombretta.

But, alas, the marriage were never celebrated. The wicked stepmother, seeing the whammy, decided to take revenge and, before the wedding, she called a powerful witch and ordered to transform the beautiful princess in stone. And so it was.

King Ombro, who was unaware of the plot, was desperate for the disappearance of his daughter and he had her searched in every corner of the kingdom but every effort was in vain.

Many years later, on those mountains, one day a shepherd who carried his sheep grazing in the Val Ombretta, I heard like a woman's song coming from the rocky wall. At first he thought that this song was generated by the whistling of the wind but, listening better, he managed to distinguish the following words:

Son de sass and no me moves (I'm stone and I do not move)
Son de crepa in Marmolèda (they are rock in Marmolada)
Son na fia arbandonèda (I am an abandoned daughter)
And no sèi per ci rejon (and I do not know why)

Years passed and Ombretta's disappearance no longer became known except among the inhabitants of Val Pettorina who handed down this sad story from father to son.

This legend, almost parallel to that of the beautiful Conturina of the Valle di Contrin, ends in this way, while that of Conturina continues with the story of a soldier, who, after hearing the young girl's song, promised to climb teh mountain to free her but the "statue" stopped him saying that after seven years, the spell was now irreversible.

In any case, some say that passing through the Val Ombretta, looking carefully at the south wall of the Marmolada, it can be seen like the image of a girl carved in the rock. There are also those who say that the key to the magical bronze portal remained hanging on the door of the church of Sottoguda for a long time.