The Vaia Stag

The artist: Marco Martalar

The artist behind this sculpture is Marco Martalar, sculptor who, in 2021, created the famous Vaia Dragon and followed with The Lagorai She-wolf in September 2022.

To create The Vaia Stag, the sculptor started with trees that had been felled by storm Vaia, which hit Trentino in October 2018. Martalar gave new life to the wood that had been destroyed by the storm, creating a hand-crafted work of art that changes with the weather and the seasons.

Where is The Vaia Stag? 

 Vaia Stag can be found on the meadows of Millegrobbe The— green pastures in summer and snow-covered fields where you can snowshoe or go cross-country skiing in winter. The Millegrobbe Cross-Country Ski Centre has 35 km of runs and is the headquarters of the prestigious Millegrobbe, one of the most important international cross-country races in Europe.

You can visit The Vaia Stag free of charge, and it is easy to get to by car, just a short walk from the Malga Millegrobbe car park. It is little over 12 km from The Winged Vaia Dragon, so if you want, you can visit both.

Storm Adrian (Vaia)

On 29 October 2018, a hurricane-force wind that reached speeds in excess of 200 km/h in Trentino left scars across our mountains. This extreme weather event, which originated in the Atlantic, flattened millions of trees, destroying tens of thousands of hectares of Alpine forest. In Europe, the storm was named after Vaia Jakobs, the manager of a multinational German company.

Her name has been immortalised in this way thanks to her brother Skouras, who had an original idea for a Christmas gift in 2017: he submitted her name to the Meteorology Institute at the University of Berlin to be assigned randomly to a specific event. A gesture of love which ultimately backfired: after all, the name Vaia stands for peace, not destruction, with the meaning of “palm leaves”, like those the crowd waved to welcome Jesus upon his return to Jerusalem on Palm Sunday.