Velturno

The isotopic analysis of the tooth enamel of Ötzi, the man found in the ice, indicates that he may have spent his childhood right here, around 3275 BC. In the Tanzgasse area other prehistoric finds have come to light. The village stands on a sunny shelf between Bressanone and Chiusa, along what was the old boundary between the two dioceses, among orchards, walnut groves and chestnut woods. And its name is probably far older than any of the families who lived here: it is attested as Velturnes between 985 and 993, and the most accepted reading takes it back to Raetic, perhaps to a personal name — a name to be set beside the Etruscan Velthur and Velathri, which is Volterra.

In German the village is called Feldthurns, which reads as fields and towers, and the coat of arms says exactly that: two red battlemented towers above a chequered field. It takes up the arms used in 1607 on the castle of the bishops of Bressanone, and the comune adopted it in 1966 — a speaking coat of arms for a name that in all likelihood means something else entirely. The castle it refers to was built between 1577 and 1587 for cardinal Cristoforo Madruzzo and enlarged by his successor; inside, the room called the Fürstenzimmer has wall and ceiling panelling among the finest Renaissance work of the area. The Province bought it in 1978 and had it restored, and today it holds the village museum. The hamlets too have their pairs of names, each one dated: Schrambach and San Pietro Mezzomonte, Schnauders and Snodres, Garn and Caerna, and Tschiffnon, which is the estate of a certain Juveanus.