Words By Meredith Erickson. Photography Christina Holmes. A table is set for lunch: wine glasses, pewter plates, a bottle of Valle d’Aosta Prié Blanc on a pink tablecloth. A window above the wooden banquette with zabaione-cream cushions embroidered in Alpine flora overlooks the Sant’ Orso meadow, the largest mountain meadow in Europe. Behind it looms the Gran Paradiso mountain, the only one of four “giants” over 13,000 feet that is completely in Italy. The sun streaming in from the window gives the scene a vintage-postcard feel, as if it was taken a world away, a century ago.

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