Renon

Renon, Ritten in German, has 7,642 inhabitants on a plateau suspended above Bolzano, between the Isarco and the Sarentino valleys. For centuries this plateau was the road to Italy: the narrows of the Isarco were almost impassable until the early fourteenth century, when the Bolzano entrepreneur Heinrich Kunter had the Kuntersweg cut through them, and whoever came down from the Brenner had to climb up here. The way was called the Kaiserweg, the "imperial road", because a great many kings of Germany and Holy Roman emperors travelled it; Frederick Barbarossa granted Longostagno an important market privilege in 1179.

When the road moved down to the valley floor the plateau found another trade, and gave a word to the German language. From the 1840s, thanks to writers such as Ludwig Steub and Beda Weber, the Sommerfrische, the "summer coolness", spread from here through the whole German-speaking world: the habit of going up into the mountains to escape the heat. Sigmund Freud spent part of his holidays here for many years, and one of the walks bears his name. Then there are the earth pyramids: reddish pinnacles held up by a boulder that shelters them from the rain, and when the column grows too thin the boulder falls and the pyramid is over.