Vipiteno

The town has two names that come from two different men. Vipiteno takes up the Roman Vipitenum, which reappears in 827 as Uuipitina and may come from an Etruscan personal name, Vipina; it is the same word that in German became Wipptal, the name of the valley. Sterzing, on the other hand, is attested from 1182 as Sterçengum and means Starzo's land, from a Germanic personal name. The Italian name was made official in the twentieth century, when the place-names of South Tyrol were Italianized, by fishing the Roman one back out.

The rest was done by the pass. Around 1280 Meinhard II of Tyrol raised the settlement to the rank of city, but the decisive step was fiscal: from 1295 Vipiteno paid its taxes as a city and was entered in the prince's ledger as civitas. The Fugger of Augsburg opened a branch here to sort the silver of the Ridanna and Fleres valleys, and after the fire of 1443 the main street was rebuilt with houses that still carry their dates, down to the Fugger branch of 1553. On the coat of arms, in use since 1328, above the Tyrolean eagle there is a crippled pilgrim with a rosary and a crutch: he is the legendary Sterzl, and he stands for the three medieval hospices of the town. A place on the road to the Brenner that put on its shield the traveller who needed help.