Bronzolo stands on the left bank of the Adige, on a wide alluvial fan: it was built up there, like Laives and Ora, to stay out of reach of the floods. What made the village, though, was the river in another sense: precisely here the Adige becomes navigable with less risk than at Bolzano. Since the Middle Ages the rafts moored in this stretch to carry goods southwards, and then went back up against the current, drawn by horses along the bank. The mooring place is still there and is still called what it was called, the Lende. All of this is in the arms: silver and green for the waters, the mountains and the valleys the river crosses, and a black postilion's horn with a gold cord, because the village was for a long time a posting station.
The name is attested in 1181 as Branzol, then as de Branzollo and Prantzol, and it comes from a Germanic personal name, Berinza, with a Latin ending. In 1341 the documents call it villa Pranzol in plebatu Bozani, because the community belonged for a long time to the parish of Bolzano. Bronzolo is one of the six comuni of the province whose population is in the majority Italian-speaking — the others are Bolzano, Laives, Vadena, Salorno and Merano — and it was so historically, already before the annexation to Italy. Which has not prevented it from having, since 1954, a German-language theatre company, the Heimatbühne Branzoll, with a repertoire both popular and classical. In the centre stands palazzo Thomsen, long the property of a patrician family.
Straight-line distances from the town centre. Tap a point to open its page.
Near Bronzolo
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
