All the monuments in Bolzano
The landmarks and masterpieces worth planning a day around.
Museo Archeologico dell'Alto AdigeSouth Tyrol Museum of ArchaeologyOtzi the Iceman, 5,300-year-old mummy, Copper Age kit complete, cold-chamber viewingOtzi melted out of a glacier on the Austrian-Italian border in September 1991, complete with his clothes, tools and an unfinished yew longbow, a Copper Age life interrupted mid-task and preserved for 5,300 years. Bolzano's museum keeps him at glacier temperature in a small cold cell, viewable through a window barely larger than a porthole, and the effect humbles most visitors more than any painting could. The floors above lay out everything found around him: a copper axe, a fur quiver of arrows, a woven grass cape, and the tattoos still visible on his skin, mapped by researchers as possible early acupuncture points. It is the fullest picture anywhere of how one ordinary person actually lived, worked and died five millennia ago.Plan the visit
Santuario di San RomedioHidden GemSanctuary of San RomedioFive churches on a rock spur, 130-step covered stair, San Romedio and the bear legend, Val di Non settingFive small churches stack up a sheer rock spur in the Val di Non like a stone accordion, built one above the other across roughly nine centuries around the hermitage of San Romedio, an 11th-century noble-turned-hermit. A covered stair of about 130 steps and several bridges link the levels, past frescoed chapels to the saint's tomb at the top, where legend says he tamed a bear that had killed his horse and rode it the rest of the way to Trento. A real bear, kept in an enclosure below the sanctuary for over a century, still recalls the story, though the practice is controversial.
CastleMessner Mountain Museum FirmianSigmundskron castle setting, Reinhold Messner's vision, mountain art and expedition relics, Dolomite viewsClimber Reinhold Messner, the first person to summit Everest without supplemental oxygen, threaded a museum through the ruins of Sigmundskron castle at the meeting point of three valleys above Bolzano, using its towers and courtyards to tell the human story of mountains rather than simply displaying climbing gear. Art, religious objects, model peaks and pieces of Messner's own expedition history wind up through the fortress toward galleries that open onto real views of the Dolomites he spent a career climbing. It is the flagship of six Messner Mountain Museums scattered across South Tyrol, and by most accounts the one to see first.
Tours worth booking in Bolzano
Compared by our editors, across providers.
Booking through these links may earn Italia Magnifica a commission, at no cost to you.
- Viator
- 2h
- 4.4★ · 14 reviews
from €9Book this tour- Viator
- 5h
- 4.6★ · 15 reviews
from €7Book this tour- Viator
- 3h 30m
- 4.9★ · 27 reviews
from €89Book this tour- Viator
- 9h
- 1.0★ · 1 reviews
from €7Book this tour
More within reach
Monuments a day trip away, elsewhere in Trentino-Alto Adige.
Madonna di CampiglioUNESCOBrenta DolomitesWestern Dolomite towers, Via delle Bocchette ledge routes, Campiglio ski slopes, reintroduced brown bears
TrentoTrento CathedralCouncil of Trent, Wheel of Fortune rose window, early Christian basilica beneath, Neptune fountain
TrentoBuonconsiglio CastlePrince-bishops’ residence, Cycle of the Months frescoes, Renaissance loggia, Torre Aquila
BressanoneHidden GemSäben AbbeyFormer bishop's seat, Benedictine-turned-Cistercian monastery, Stations of the Cross climb, Acropolis of Tyrol views
RoveretoMART RoveretoBotta's glass-domed piazza, Futurism collection, Depero archive, twentieth-century Italian art
CanazeiUNESCOSass PordoiCable car to 2,950 m, Terrace of the Dolomites, Marmolada glacier view, Sella plateau
MeranoTrauttmansdorff Castle GardensEighty garden worlds, Sissi's castle, Touriseum museum, palms beneath the Alps
OrtiseiUNESCOSecedaDolomites ridge, sheer north face, Odle peaks, alpine meadows, summit cross