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BOLZANO BOZEN |
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Situated on the junction of the rivers Talvera (Talfer) and Isarco (Eisack)
near the southern limit of the province, BOLZANO (BOZEN) is Alto Adige's
chief town. For centuries a valley market town and way station,
Bolzano's fortunes in the Middle Ages vacillated as the Counts of Tyrol
and the Bishops of Trento competed for power. The town passed to the
Habsburgs in the fourteenth century, then at the turn of the nineteenth
century Bavaria took control, opposed by Tyrolese patriot and military
leader Andreas Hofer. His battle in 1809 to keep the Tyrol under
Austrian rule was only temporarily successful, as in the same year the
Austrian Emperor ceded the Tyrol to the Napoleonic kingdom of Italy.
More changes followed, as Bolzano was handed back to Austria until after
World War I, whereupon it passed, like the rest of the province, to
Italy. Nowadays, in both winter and summer, the town is a busy tourist
resort, and its pavement cafés and generally relaxed pace of life make
it a good, if uneventful, place to rest up or use as a base for trips
into the mountains. An unmissable pleasure is the local wine: Bolzano is
at the head of the wine road , which runs south to the border with
Trentino, and it's especially well known for its Chardonnay.
The Town
Central Bolzano definitely looks like a part of the German-speaking
world. Restaurants serve speck, gulasch and knödel , and bakers sell
black bread and sachertorte . The centre of town is Piazza Walther ,
whose pavement cafés, around its statue of the minnesinger (troubadour)
Walther von der Vogelweide, are the town's favoured meeting places; with
just a L10,000/¬5.16 deposit you can borrow bicycles for use around town
from here. Converted into a cathedral as recently as 1964, the Duomo (Dom),
on the edge of the square, resembles a parish church: built in the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and restored after being bombed in
World War II, it has a striking green-and-yellow mosaic roof and
elaborately carved spire. The fourteenth-century Franciscan church on
Via dei Francescani is also worth seeking out, embellished with a carved
wooden altarpiece by Hans Klocher and with elegant, frescoed cloisters
from the same period.
A couple of streets west of Piazza Walther, on Via Cappuccini, the
Chiesa dei Domenicani (Dominican monastery) has frescoes of fifteenth-century
courtly life painted on the walls of the decaying cloisters, framed by a
growth of stone tracery. The Cappella di San Giovanni, built at the
beginning of the fourteenth century, retains frescoes by painters of the
Giotto school, including a Triumph of Death underneath a starry vault.
Follow the street north to Piazza Erbe , site of a daily fruit and
vegetable market, from where the oriel windows and eleventh-century
arcades of Via Portici lead off to the right.
On the west side of the old town stands one of Alto Adige's more
important museums, the recently opened Museo Archeologico (Tues-Sun
10am-5pm, Thurs until 7pm, www.iceman.it ; L10,000/¬5.16), a ten-minute
walk west of the centre at Via Museo (Museumstrasse) 43. Once the seat
of the Austro-Hungarian National Bank, and then the Banco d'Italia, the
building's four floors trace the region's history and developing culture
from the end of the last Ice Age to the early Middle Ages, through
exhibits, reconstructions, models and multimedia presentations. At the
heart of the museum is the Iceman, nicknamed "Ötzi", the superbly
preserved mummy of an early Copper Age male discovered in the ice of the
Ötzaler Alps in 1991. Visitors can only view the mummy through a small
window in a high-tech refrigeration unit, its preservation depends on
remaining in an identical climate to the one in which he was discovered.
At around 5300 years old, "Ötzi", his clothing, and his attendant
possessions provide an unprecedented insight into the everyday culture
of his time.
Continuing westwards down Via Museo takes you to a pleasant park
alongside the River Talvera (Talfer). Bolzano's German and Gothic
quarter ends on the other side of the Ponte Talvera, where Piazza della
Vittoria signals the edge of the Italian town, much of it laid out by
Mussolini's favourite architect, Marcello Piacentini. The epic triumphal
arch on the square was commissioned by Mussolini in 1928 and is
something of a controversial monument. Until a recent clean-up it was
covered with graffiti and surrounded by low railings, and it was even
bombed by German-speaking separatists in the late-1980s. The piazza is
now the site of relatively sedate activity, hosting a big general market
on Saturdays.
If you've time, follow Corso Libertŕ from the square to the leafy suburb
of Gries, on the left bank, where the Gothic Parrocchiale in the main
square, overshadowed by a Baroque church nearby, contains a richly
carved and painted fifteenth-century altarpiece by Michael Pacher
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