Situated in the Dolomite Mountains, where the construction in Italy starts to turn from stone, plaster and ceramics to wooden framed structures wood floors, Antico Cadore is a manufacturer of new and reclaimed salvaged wood flooring.

The owner of this company is truly gifted in his talents for finding and salvaging his materials from dilapidated wooden structures throughout Europe, some of which can date back to the 1500's and earlier. The process is long, strenuous, and cumbersome, which is perhaps the direct cause and effect for Antico Cadore in yielding some of the most amazing wooden products produced on the planet.

First the ancient wooden beams, floor boards, and other various timbers are salvaged by a team of demolition specialists, and moved to Antico Cadore's lumber mill high in the Italian Alps.The first order of business is removing all foreign elements such as nails, screws and other undesirables from the timbers. the team uses metal detectors to first locate offenders, and various hand tools to remove them. If needed the timbers are dried, and then cut into wear layers to be used as the surface of engineered floors.This process retains a much more attractive rate of return for the highly valuable salvaged timbers.

While all of the salvaged timbers are manufactured in this manor, the truly most remarkable products in the company's repertoire are referred to as Prima Patina.

In Italian, prima patina literally means "first floor". In the case of Antico Cadore, it refers to a range floors produced using the exterior surface of their salvaged woods as the top layer of an engineered floor.

This truly remarkable product then not only has a weathered look that can appear to be in excess of 500 years old, it actually is.