I lived in Vicenza, Italia for 2 years in the region of Veneto which is right next to Trentino Alto Adige. Always noticed that the people of Vicenza had kind of a Austrian/German look to them. This past summer met a German Italian couple in Perugia. He was from Germany and she was from Vicenza. Even though she is Italian she actually looked even more German than he did. She was blond, blue eyed and very fair. Their children were very fair too.

Since Vicenza is real near Trentino Alto Adige I would spend a lot of time there sking and traveling around. Remember seeing people singing German type folk songs in Italian. And there always seemed to be a lot of German speaking tourists around or maybe they were the people from there. Also remember hearing about problems with the Austrian and Italian police on the border between Trentino Alto Adige and Austria.


Perhaps Trentino Alto Adige is the least Italian of regions. Laid out along the country's northeastern border with Austria, it is a breathtaking land of saw-toothed ridges and snow-capped peaks, alpine meadows and glittering waterfalls, popular ski resorts and immaculate medieval towns. In winter, the skiing is absolutely unparalleled. Spring and fall offer enchanting hikes along an extensive network of well-marked trails, with stops in remote mountain hamlets where German is the most common language and dumplings are more prevalent than spaghetti. Italians have long known this to be one of their best vacation spots, combining glorious nature, warm hospitality, reliable accommodations and, with a few memorable exceptions, extremely affordable prices.


If you look for Trentino Alto Adige on a map, you'll find that many of the localities have two names, such as Bolzano/Bozen, Merano/Meran, Bressanone/Brixen, Cortaccia/Kurtatsch, Castelvecchio/Altenburg, Corno Nero/Schwarzhorn and of course, Corno Bianco/Weisshorn. Despite its calm, pastoral, orderly appearance, this is a deeply divided region, an area which has long struggled to find a homogenous identity for itself. Napoleon was a key player in this story, as it was he who conquered the region and placed it under the realm of the Austrian Habsburgs, who ruled it until it was returned to Italy at the end of World War I. A large and very vocal segment of the local population never accepted that political arrangement, and in 1939, Mussolini gave them the chance to either accept Italian citizenship and remain or assume German citizenship and emigrate north. The overwhelming majority chose the latter option, leaving this largely rural territory even more underpopulated than before. Mussolini also made the people in Trentino Alto Adige change their Germany names to Italian names and made it ilegal to speak German.


In 1948, the Italian legislature made Trentino Alto Adige an autonomous region. While this may sound like a reasonable solution, it has actually proved to be little more than another political expedient which has led, in a way, to further estrangement from Italy and to a sort of de facto internal division. Even the most casual visitor will have little trouble noticing that Trentino, the southern part of the region centered around the beautiful city of Trento, is far more Italian than Alto Adige, which is also known as Südtyrol. In addition, sprinkled throughout the mountain valleys of both areas are about 80,000 residents who, clinging to yet another ethnic tradition, speak an ancient language known as Ladin.(See below this post) This utterly incomprehensible tongue, a combination of Celtic dialects and Latin, resulted from the encounter of northern colonists and Roman legions in the first century BC. The town of Vigo di Fassa has an interesting museum illustrating the history and colorful customs of the Ladin people.


Many foreign travelers first encounter Trentino Alto Adige on their way south from Austria. Starting from the dizzying heights of the Brenner Pass, In Italy has arranged an itinerary for you to visit the many splendors of this, the Rooftop of Italy.

Travel with us to the spectacular Dolomite Mountains, criss-crossed by thousands of ski runs and hiking trails; visit charming mountain villages and medieval Tyrolean towns, perfectly preserved castles and hillside Gothic chapels.

One of the prettiest and most interesting towns in the region is Merano.

Where there are mountains there are valleys, and where there are valleys there are castles to guard them. Few places on earth can boast as many magical castles as Trentino Alto Adige.

Don't expect to gorge yourself on pasta in Trentino Alto Adige: at the end of your hair-raising drive through precipitous mountain passes you're more likely to find würstel and zauerkraut on the menu.

The many official mountain climbing schools of Trentino Alto Adige offer you a chance to climb or hike in a group led by an expert guide.

If you are a skier, one of the best ways to see Trentino Alto Adige is the Dolomite Superski pass, which offers access to 650 miles of ski runs for $50 a day. Even if you don't ski, there are plenty of places to see and charming hotels to stay in.

Follow this itinerary through the province of Bolzano, a wine-lover's paradise where miles and miles of vineyards alternate with vast flowering orchards.

General history and history of the Ladin language

The Ladin-speaking area became part of the Roman Empire in the year 15 BC. The Romans introduced Latin, which evolved into Ladin in this area. Around 1000 AD the area was divided into individual principalities. Around the year 1800 some areas of the Ladin-speaking area came under the rule of Joseph II, later to come under the Austrian government; between 1806 and 1813 they fell to Bavaria and Italy and then remained part of Austria until the end of the First World War. In 1927, the Ladin-speaking valleys were allocated to the three Provinces mentioned above as a way of weakening the national groups. Four years beforehand Belluno, Val Badia and Gardena were made part of the Province of Bolzano, while Avisio remained in Trentino. In 1939 the government offered the Ladins the opportunity to emigrate under the Option; they were classified as Allogeni, although Ladin was officially classified as an Italian Dialect by the Italian government. This Option was cancelled by the German occupation in 1943. Annexation to Italy took place against the wishes of the people after the Second World War. After the War, in 1948 the Ladins in Bolzano and Trentino were given a Special Statute, but this was not the case in Belluno. In 1972, the new Autonomous Statute came into force in Bolzano, strengthening the legal position of the Ladins.

Nowadays there are a large number of organisations devoted to the preservation of the Ladin language and culture, the oldest being the Naziun Ladina, which was founded in 1870. The Union di Ladins, which was founded in 1914, performed useful work in setting up various organisations, such as libraries, and took over the editing of the Usc di Ladins, which subsequently grew from a monthly into a highly regarded weekly. In 1975, the Avisio valley was given its own Ladin cultural institute (Istitut Cultural Ladin Majon di Fashegn). One year later, the Ladin cultural institute Istitut Ladin Micurà de Rü was set up under the new Autonomous Statute and opened its doors in 1977. This institute has its own library and has concentrated on preserving the language. It is also concerned with the training of teachers of Ladin and with adult education in the broader sense.

You know I have many post cards from Trentino Alto Adige in an album. The post cards look like Switzerland and Austria. When people see the post cards they can't believe it's Italy. I always like to see their reaction when I tell them to look at these pictures of Italy.(Actually they do look like pictures. People will ask me if they are pictues or post cards. Sometimes I just tell them they are pictures I took. But I usually tell them the truth.;))

I lived in Vicenza, Italia for 2 years in the region of Veneto which is right next to Trentino Alto Adige. Always noticed that the people of Vicenza had kind of a Austrian/German look to them. This past summer met a German Italian couple in Perugia. He was from Germany and she was from Vicenza. Even though she is Italian she actually looked even more German than he did. She was blond, blue eyed and very fair. Their children were very fair too.

Since Vicenza is real near Trentino Alto Adige I would spend a lot of time there sking and traveling around. Remember seeing people singing German type folk songs in Italian. And there always seemed to be a lot of German speaking tourists around or maybe they were the people from there. Also remember hearing about problems with the Austrian and Italian police on the border between Trentino Alto Adige and Austria.


Perhaps Trentino Alto Adige is the least Italian of regions. Laid out along the country's northeastern border with Austria, it is a breathtaking land of saw-toothed ridges and snow-capped peaks, alpine meadows and glittering waterfalls, popular ski resorts and immaculate medieval towns. In winter, the skiing is absolutely unparalleled. Spring and fall offer enchanting hikes along an extensive network of well-marked trails, with stops in remote mountain hamlets where German is the most common language and dumplings are more prevalent than spaghetti. Italians have long known this to be one of their best vacation spots, combining glorious nature, warm hospitality, reliable accommodations and, with a few memorable exceptions, extremely affordable prices.


If you look for Trentino Alto Adige on a map, you'll find that many of the localities have two names, such as Bolzano/Bozen, Merano/Meran, Bressanone/Brixen, Cortaccia/Kurtatsch, Castelvecchio/Altenburg, Corno Nero/Schwarzhorn and of course, Corno Bianco/Weisshorn. Despite its calm, pastoral, orderly appearance, this is a deeply divided region, an area which has long struggled to find a homogenous identity for itself. Napoleon was a key player in this story, as it was he who conquered the region and placed it under the realm of the Austrian Habsburgs, who ruled it until it was returned to Italy at the end of World War I. A large and very vocal segment of the local population never accepted that political arrangement, and in 1939, Mussolini gave them the chance to either accept Italian citizenship and remain or assume German citizenship and emigrate north. The overwhelming majority chose the latter option, leaving this largely rural territory even more underpopulated than before. Mussolini also made the people in Trentino Alto Adige change their Germany names to Italian names and made it ilegal to speak German.


In 1948, the Italian legislature made Trentino Alto Adige an autonomous region. While this may sound like a reasonable solution, it has actually proved to be little more than another political expedient which has led, in a way, to further estrangement from Italy and to a sort of de facto internal division. Even the most casual visitor will have little trouble noticing that Trentino, the southern part of the region centered around the beautiful city of Trento, is far more Italian than Alto Adige, which is also known as Südtyrol. In addition, sprinkled throughout the mountain valleys of both areas are about 80,000 residents who, clinging to yet another ethnic tradition, speak an ancient language known as Ladin.(See below this post) This utterly incomprehensible tongue, a combination of Celtic dialects and Latin, resulted from the encounter of northern colonists and Roman legions in the first century BC. The town of Vigo di Fassa has an interesting museum illustrating the history and colorful customs of the Ladin people.


Many foreign travelers first encounter Trentino Alto Adige on their way south from Austria. Starting from the dizzying heights of the Brenner Pass, In Italy has arranged an itinerary for you to visit the many splendors of this, the Rooftop of Italy.

Travel with us to the spectacular Dolomite Mountains, criss-crossed by thousands of ski runs and hiking trails; visit charming mountain villages and medieval Tyrolean towns, perfectly preserved castles and hillside Gothic chapels.

One of the prettiest and most interesting towns in the region is Merano.

Where there are mountains there are valleys, and where there are valleys there are castles to guard them. Few places on earth can boast as many magical castles as Trentino Alto Adige.

Don't expect to gorge yourself on pasta in Trentino Alto Adige: at the end of your hair-raising drive through precipitous mountain passes you're more likely to find würstel and zauerkraut on the menu.

The many official mountain climbing schools of Trentino Alto Adige offer you a chance to climb or hike in a group led by an expert guide.

If you are a skier, one of the best ways to see Trentino Alto Adige is the Dolomite Superski pass, which offers access to 650 miles of ski runs for $50 a day. Even if you don't ski, there are plenty of places to see and charming hotels to stay in.

Follow this itinerary through the province of Bolzano, a wine-lover's paradise where miles and miles of vineyards alternate with vast flowering orchards.
My daughter and I are staying in Vicenza for 10 days later in the year. What are the best towns to visit in the Veneto area? We plan spending time in Burano one day and will visit Venice, but I have no desire to stay there. Thanks, Barbara W.

Ciao Barbara, I really like Vicenza. You can use Vicenza as your home base to visit many surrounding cities and places. Vicenza is half way between my two favorite cities Venezia and my favorite city Verona. I plan on staying in Vicenza a month questo anno o al altro.

Verona is a must see city for anybody visiting Italy but for somebody who's staying in Vicenza much more so. Verona is only about 35 to 45 minutes from Vicenza. Oh si, Verona, la citta di Romeo e Julietta. Cosi romantico! Verona e molta bella e moto interesante. I'v been all over Italy and I think Verona is today the most elegant city of Italy. It's really an over looked jewel that many tourist miss. When I'm in Verona I feel like I living back in the times of Romeo e Julieta. As if all this is not enough Verona is also called La piccola Roma. Little Rome. Verona was a thriving Roman settlement and has a lot of Roman ruins which include an intact Roman type Colisium that is more intact than its counter part in Rome. It's still used today for operas and fills up with up to 25,000 people in the summer. Verona has it all with much less hetic tourism of Venezia and other big tourist cities. Get on the train in Vicenza, go to Verona, get off the train and a bus will take you to the center of town of Verona. Lake Garda which is Italy's largest lake is right next to Verona. Que bello e Lago di Garda. Do you know how Lake Garda got it's name? When the first people saw lake Garda somebody said "Oh guarda(look) che bello lago. So that's how Lake Garda got it's name. Cosi mi hanno detto. Molto buffo.

I like Padua anche. Padua is where the first woman ever earned a doctorate in the mid 17th century. If you got to Venice, Padua is just right next door. It's the last stop before Venice from when you get on the train to Vencie from Vicenza. In fact if you want to stay all night in Venice you're better off staying in Padua for getting a place in the summer and cheaper too.

Not far from Vicenza are towns like Bolzano. Bolzano itself provides one of the most vivid examples of the coexistence of Italian and Germanic cultures. The old part of the city, gathered around pizza Walther and the arcades of the Via dei Portici, is marked by patrician houses and German Gothic architecture. Was first there as a 19 year old kid. It all seemed so interesting with that mixture of Italian and Germanic cultures. The museum there has a fascinating collection including the famous mummified body of Otzi, the Iceman. Found by chance in the Alps in 1991, the extraordinarily well-preserved remains, including his cloting and copper axe, are estimated to be well over 5,000 years old. The Iceman is on display in a refrigerated capsule, maintaining a below zero temperature and protected behind bullet-proof glass.