Merano too bears a Roman's name: it is a prediale from Marius plus the suffix -anum, and in the documents it appears as Mairania as early as 857. On the town's doorstep stands Castel Tirolo, the castle that gave its name to the whole region: from there the counts came down to make Merano their capital. In 1420 the court moved to Innsbruck and the town lost weight, but it kept the title of capital of the county of Tyrol until 1848 — four centuries of a capital without a court.
Its second life begins with the Habsburg nineteenth century, when doctors and scientists started sending the sick here for the mild climate: the Kurhaus was inaugurated in 1874 and later enlarged by Friedrich Ohmann, a man of the Vienna Secession, who designed the rotunda of the Kursaal. The empress Sissi came — the promenades bear her name — but so did Franz Kafka and Gottfried Benn. In the Second World War Merano was not bombed, because it was considered a zone for the care of the sick. Today the vocation is the same: the gardens of Castel Trauttmansdorff line up eighty botanical landscapes, the Terme are signed by Matteo Thun, and the Maia racecourse has run its Grand Prix since the thirties. Under the medieval arcades speck and spritz mix with strudel and espresso; the cable cars climb to Merano 2000 and to the valleys of the masi.
cappella di Santa Barbara · Castel Fragsburg · Castel Katzenstein and 5 more
24 places to stay · top rated: Villa Eden a member of Leading Hotels of the World 9.7 · Hotel Sonnenhof 9.6
Next up: Saint Nicholas, patron of Merano, Monday 17 May
Nearest airport: Treviso, 139 km away
Merano is part of 🏔️ Mountains ♨️ Spa towns
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📅 Every year, on Whit Monday
The patron of Merano is Saint Nicholas, to whom the parish church at the end of the arcades is dedicated, and the patron's public holiday falls on Whit Monday.
cappella di Santa Barbara The two-storey octagonal chapel behind Merano's parish church, once the cemetery chapel, with three altars. 
Castel Fragsburg Merano's highest castle, above Sinigo: born in the thirteenth century, a hunting lodge and then a hotel. Castel Katzenstein The medieval castle of the lords of Katzenstein near Merano, rebuilt in the nineteenth century: a private home Castello Principesco Duke Sigismund's fifteenth-century residence in the centre of Merano, saved from demolition and now a museum. chiesa di Santa Maria del Conforto The Romanesque church of Maia Bassa, perhaps Merano's oldest, with frescoes of the twelfth and fourteenth cent 
Giardini di Castel Trauttmansdorff Merano's botanical garden: about eighty gardens around the castle where Sissi stayed, with the Touriseum. Straight-line distances from the town centre. Tap a point to open its page.
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
Outside Merano, but an easy day trip away.
