The roof of Bolzano cathedral is made of glazed tiles in green and yellow set in lozenges, and you recognise it from anywhere in the basin. Beside it rises the bell tower with its pierced spire, finished in the sixteenth century by a master from Swabia: stone worked like lace, a thing more of the German world than the Italian. Bolzano is exactly that, the point where the two worlds touch.
What to see
The church is Gothic, of red sandstone, with a carved pulpit, fourteenth-century frescoes on the walls and its doorways. On the side facing the square opens the little door called the wine door, decorated with vines and bunches of grapes: through it came the farmers bringing wine, and the carving recalls that this city lived on that too.
Under the floor lies the part almost nobody imagines. In 1944 bombing badly damaged the cathedral, and when restoration began in 1948, digging brought up the foundations of three earlier churches, from the fourth century to the twelfth, and a Roman inscription. The church you see is the last of a series nobody knew was there.
Visiting
The cathedral is in piazza Walther, right in the centre, five minutes from the station; free entry, closed at midday and on Sundays in the morning for services. Half an hour.
Our editors' tip
Look at the roof from above, not from below: take the cable car towards the Renon or up the hill, and from there the green and yellow lozenges read as a pattern. Then come back down and look for the wine door on the flank: it is low, discreet, and at street level nobody notices it.