Travel Guide Bressanone

Bressanone or Brixen is the largest city in the northern Italian Tyrol, with about 22,000 inhabitants. It is 75% German speaking. It is easy to reach by train from Bolzano or Trento and is a good base for exploring the entire region. Bressanone is a town with a lot to offer: first there are the city gates through which you enter the heart of the historic center, then the main square with its fountain, its many benches, its pastel facades, and finally the fiume (river) that crosses the city in its middle and whose sound of water lulls our stroll. Bressanone is the oldest town in the Tyrol, its birth dating, with remarkable precision, to September 13, 901. As the seat of the prince-bishops from 970, and then the provincial capital from 1027 to the middle of the 13th century, Bressanone has preserved an almost intact legacy of its historical role. Its pedestrianized city center still retains a medieval soul with its alleys, arcades and stalls selling fresh local produce. The thousand-year-old city is a center of art and culture, and you will never tire of walking through its streets. In Via dei Portici Maggiori, you can stop to contemplate the most beautiful house in Bressanone, the Pflaunder-Goreth, while in Via dei Portici Minori, you can stop to marvel at the 16th century statue of the Wild Mann, who, according to popular legend, would spit gold coins from the mouths of his three heads from time to time.