Bolzano's most famous resident is 5,300 years old: Ötzi, the Similaun iceman released by the glacier in 1991, rests in the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology and is worth the train ticket on his own. Around him, a city that speaks two languages and lays two tables: merchant porticoes and Piazza Walther, strudel and canederli dumplings beside espresso and gelato.
Since 1990 its Christmas Market has been Italy's most celebrated. The Renon cable car climbs in twelve minutes to meadows facing the Dolomites; the Messner Mountain Museum at Firmian castle tells the mountains like nowhere else.
Near Bolzano
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
