On a hill on the edge of Bolzano, above the Adige, stands a castle first named around 945. It passed to the prince-bishop of Trento in 1027, then to the ministerials who took from it the name Firmian, and in 1473 it fell to Sigismund, prince of Tyrol, who enlarged it into a fortress and gave it his own name: Sigmundskron, Sigismund's crown.
What to see
Of the older castle few traces remain at the highest point, taken up by the chapel dedicated to two bishops, which seems to predate the walls and to have been swallowed by them. The rest is curtain walls, towers and wall-walks that fell into ruin from the seventeenth century onwards, because keeping them cost too much, and that have been recovered without hiding the cracks.
Today the complex holds the main seat of the mountain museums created by Reinhold Messner: the route climbs and drops among the walls, with rooms cut inside the towers and steel stairs set against the stone, and it tells of the relation between people and mountains, from religions to expeditions. From the terraces you see the basin of Bolzano and the vineyards.
Visiting
The castle is south-west of the city, reached by bus or car and then a walk uphill of some ten minutes; entry is with the museum ticket, the weekly closing day must be checked, and not all of the route is easy going. Two hours.
Our editors' tip
During the restoration a neolithic grave came to light below the castle, with the skeleton of a woman, between six and seven thousand years old: somebody was living here four millennia before the first stone was laid. Look at the hill from a distance and you will see why: it is the only rise that commands the river.