Tirolo

This village near Merano gave its name to a whole region, and the name means land. The first mention of the settlement — not of the castle nor of the family, which are older — is of 1158, vicus Tyrâl, then Tyrol in 1191 and Tirol from 1335; the root is an Indo-European word standing for land and belonging to the sphere of property. The way the name spread is precise. In 1027 the emperor Conrad II had also given the bishop of Trent comital rights over the Adige valley, because bishops were less exposed to dynastic pressures and better guaranteed the passage towards Rome. In the thirteenth century a family of nobles who took their name from the castle here, and whom the bishops of Trent and Bressanone had invested with the advocacy — that is, with their representation in the administration — found the way to appropriate the bishops' comital prerogatives. With Albert III and then with Meinhard II the counts found almost the whole of historic Tyrol in their hands, though formally it still belonged to the bishops; and from then on that land, which the documents called Land im Gebirge, the country among the mountains, has been called Tyrol.

The castle is now the historical museum of the province, with a frescoed Romanesque chapel and a carved portal; inside there is also a centre for the recovery of injured birds of prey, which are flown twice a day before going back to the wild. Around it there are others: Brunnenburg, where the American poet Ezra Pound lived and where there is now a museum of agriculture; San Zeno, Auer, and the lone tower of Thurnstein among the terraces of vines. A good part of the Texel group nature park lies in the comune's territory, and the footpaths follow for long stretches the Waalwege, the old irrigation channels, up to the nine little lakes of Sopranes. Dante names the place in the Comedy, setting the lake of Garda at the foot of the alp «sovra Tiralli». Here people speak almost only German.