Caldaro sulla strada del vino

Caldaro sulla Strada del Vino, Kaltern in German, has 7,660 inhabitants in the Oltradige, at the foot of the Mendola. The name already appears in the ninth century in the forms Caldare and Caldarium, and it most probably comes from the Latin caldaria, the cauldron: when at the end of the sixteenth century the town gave itself a coat of arms, it put exactly that in it, a copper kettle with a handle on a silver field. In the hollow below the town lies Lake Caldaro, the largest sheet of water in South Tyrol and also one of the shallowest, barely six metres at its deepest point; the wind makes it good for sailing, and in winter it freezes over so often that people skate on it.

The old centre is built in a style that exists almost only here and is called the Überetscher Baustil: northern European Gothic mixed with the Renaissance of the south, in the noble residences put up in the second half of the sixteenth century. It is the architecture of a place sitting on the seam between two Europes and building in both manners at once. From the hamlet of Sant'Antonio the Mendola funicular has been running since 1903, one of the most important in Europe of its kind, and since 1955 the town has housed the provincial wine museum: only fair, given that Caldaro has been a market town since 1657 and gives its name to one of the best-known wines of the region.