Appiano sulla strada del vino

Appiano sulla Strada del Vino, Eppan in German, has 13,988 inhabitants in the Oltradige, and it does not even have a centre called Appiano: the town hall stands in the hamlet of San Michele. The name is very old, Paul the Deacon already writes it around 590 as Appianum, and in a deed drawn up at Trento in 845 there appears the first inhabitant whose name we know, a certain Fritari de Apiano, whom the notary describes as teutiscus, German. Around 1800 a German source calls the place Deutschmichael, "German Saint Michael", to distinguish it from the Welschmichael, the Italian one, that is San Michele all'Adige. The words "sulla Strada del Vino", on the Wine Road, were added only in 1973.

The Oltradige is the area with the highest density of castles in Europe: around Appiano they count 180 of them, between fortresses, manors and country seats. But the strangest thing in the territory is a biotope, the Buche di ghiaccio, the ice holes. The microclimate these holes create turns the vegetation belts upside down: at low altitude you find alpine rhododendron, alpine clematis and cowberries, plants that normally live much higher, and a few steps away species that like the heat. In a tiny area up to 600 different ones have been counted.