The Vaia Eagle in Marcesina

The author: Marco Martalar

“Nothing simpler, a little wood, some cutting tools and good music”. In this case too, the work was realised by the sculptor Marco Martalar, who, in 2021, realised the famous Vaia Dragon, regretfully destroyed by a fire in August 2023, as well as the great Lagorai She-Wolf and the Vaia Stag.

To create the Marcesina Eagle, the sculptor started from the trees destroyed by the Vaia Storm, which hit Trentino in October 2018. Martalar has given new life to the wood razed to the ground by that devastation, creating a handmade work of art that changes with the changing of time and seasons.

Where is the Vaia Eagle located?

The Marcesina Eagle is located in Lower Valsugana, in the Municipality of Grigno, on the Marcesina Plateau. To reach it, you can arrive by car as far as the Barricata Hut parking lot, following the road to Enego. A short 5-minute walk along an easy, well-marked path takes you directly to the Eagle.

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.