Piazza Walther and the Arcades
The Tyrolean heart of the city
Bolzano, the capital of South Tyrol, is a bilingual city where Italian and German culture meet, at the confluence of the Talvera and Isarco rivers, surrounded by vineyards and mountains. Its heart is Piazza Walther, a large, elegant square, named after the medieval poet Walther von der Vogelweide, the greatest German lyric poet of the Middle Ages, who according to tradition was born in this area; his marble statue of 1889 stands in the centre. The square is overlooked by the cathedral, a Gothic church in pink sandstone with a slender openwork bell tower and a roof covered with colourful glazed tiles in geometric patterns, and is lined with cafés where you can sit in the sun.
A few steps away runs the Via dei Portici, in German Laubengasse, the main street of the old town, laid out in the twelfth century by the bishops of Trento as a market street: for about 300 metres, it is lined on both sides by tall, narrow houses with arcades on the ground floor, oriel windows and painted façades, which house historic shops, cafés and boutiques. At the western end of the arcades, the lively Piazza delle Erbe, with its daily fruit and vegetable market and its bronze Neptune fountain, is the place to taste local specialities, such as speck, cheeses and Tyrolean bread. The city also has the Dominican church, with frescoes of the Giotto school, the Museion, the museum of contemporary art in a glass cube, and, on the hills, castles such as Castel Roncolo.
Tip: taste a glass of Lagrein, the local red wine, in one of the wine bars of the arcades; climb to Castel Roncolo for its medieval frescoes.
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