As we drive from Rovereto to Merano, William suggests a detour. He’s spotted Lago di Tovel on the map and already knows he wants to see mountain lakes. We’re on a precipitous road. I’m unable to read because of endless switchbacks. We climb and dip and climb and finally the forest parts and we arrive.
The green, green water, fringed with conifers and hardwood trees, is backed by the jagged gray peaks of the Brenta Dolomites, some with white rock slopes that I first think are covered with snow. We start to walk the lake path, past a beach where a few people are sunning on towels. In the shade, family picnics are in progress. Swimming isn’t allowed. How frustrating to lie in the sun, unable to splash into this clear water to cool off. Planning only to go a little way, we keep walking, drawn by the shifting scenery and the water changing color as depths and shadows play. Soon we’re a third of the way around. Go back or continue?
We go on. An easy walk. Only a few others on the trail. Most turn back. Why does this place seem different? I’ve walked with pleasure around many lakes, but here, something else is happening—an exhilaration. Contact high. Is it the clarity of the air sharply defining where water meets trees, trees meet mountains, and the mountains, sky? I take off my sunglasses, thinking the lenses distort color. But, no. The scene is vibrant and super-real. Sunlight glints off the facets of the peaks, turning the stone angles pink and gray and violet. The air deeply fresh and the lake translucent, like a painting on a mirror. I sense how I would feel in the water, water clear as air, frigid, purifying water. Even imagining a plunge is renewing.
Halfway around, we come upon another beach where a few pale forms are stretched out on their towels. Others have ventured into the forbidden water. I take off my shoes and step in up to my ankles. Quick thrums of pain shoot up my legs. Forget swimming. The path turns craggy and uphill for a hundred yards or so, then smooths out onto a wider path covered with pine needles. Quiet. A crow caw splits the air. As afternoon lengthens the shadows, the water turns from emerald to inky blue, even turquoise where the sun hits. William stops to photograph a waterfall and stream rushing through ferns. We’ve walked only two hours, two memorable hours.
WHEN WE REACH Merano, it’s late in the day. We’re at Villa Adria, a pretty Belle Époque hotel that feels like someone’s lovely summer house. We’re greeted as though we’re being welcomed back, although it’s our first time here. Piero, who must have worked here forever, shows us the reading room, cozy with books, antiques, and Oriental rug. French doors open to a flowery terrace. William is enchanted by the 1914 wooden elevator, like a fanciful birdcage with upholstered benches. Our rooms look out over villas with terraces and gardens. Obviously, we’re in a microclimate; this looks like Florida.
William is introduced to the austere style of making up the bed with an individual duvet. “I like a top sheet,” he says. “This thing is heavy.” Merano is full of “cure hotels” (medical), now rethought as spas (sybaritic). Villa Adria is a place where most guests check in for a week of relaxation and treatments, and some active trips organized by the hotel. Biking, hiking, golf, and excursions are listed for the following day. When I reserved, I was charmed by the website. Creative, original people and individuals, I read, are the most welcome. We hoped we qualified. Staff photos include all the housemaids and waiters. I like the attitude.
Piero brings us prosecco on the terrace and the reflection off the putty-colored building casts a sunny glow over everyone. La vita è bella. The dinner hour is earlier up in this area than in Tuscany. When we stroll into the yellow dining room at eight, our table is the only vacant one. The staff is welcoming and the buffet (not my preferred way to dine) lavish. The waiter has the good recommendation of a citrusy Ploner Sauvignon. “Do you all think hotels have moods?” I ask.
William gives a slight eye-roll but gamely answers, “Possibly. What’s the mood here?”
“I think…optimistic.”
Ed says, “Effervescent. The mood of someone about to sing an aria.”
“I’m going to get some more pasta.” William is smiling. Who knows what goes on in the head of someone fifteen traveling with grandparents? But I can imagine.
THE LUCKIEST TOWNS are those built along a river and if the river is the picturesque Passer, double luck. Were the surrounding mountains placed there simply to enhance the setting of this elegant town? Nineteenth-century Merano was where the Habsburg empress Elisabeth, affectionately called Sissi, came for her health, bringing in her wake family and an Austrian court entourage. Other nobles followed, enjoying the mild winter and participating in baths, drinking the waters, and promenading in gardens with fountains and pavilions. An outdoor treatment was “the terrain cure,” which simply meant walking on slightly rising paths. No major exertion required, wrote a Professor M. J. Örtel of Munich, but a proven remedy for the heart, circulation, and muscles.
The genteel aura of an aristocratic spa town remains. The white and pale yellow neoclassical and Liberty (Art Nouveau) buildings, long paths along the river, and curated shopping streets would lure Sissi today. She might be taken aback by the egalitarian Merano thermal baths project. Designed by notable architect Matteo Thun, the complex right in town offers twenty-five different pools, plus saunas—one with a snow room to cool in—and massages and other treatments with local products such as hay, wool, and fruits. Besides various hot and cold pools, there’s a salt pool, one for non-swimmers, another for children. Hotel Terme Merano stays open all year. I fancy sitting in a steaming pool surrounded by snowbanks.
I’m stunned at Thun’s vision. A vast glass box, maybe fifteen meters high, placed like a cloche over pools that abut each other, with lounging platforms in between. You’re in a paradisaical terrarium. I love bold architecture that isn’t just for flash but embraces function in surprising ways. Thun’s ancient colleague would be the architect of the baths of Caracalla in Rome.
I didn’t expect to be stunned by this region’s contemporary architecture. Renzo Piano’s MUSE in Trento, Mario Botta’s MART in Rovereto, now Matteo Thun. We will definitely come back to the Thun terme for a few days of escape. But now, we want to see the rest of Merano.
“Okay, Franny,” Ed says, “do towns have moods—and if so, what’s the tenor of Merano?” We’re walking down the Corso Libertà, lined with upscale shops and trees, including the southern magnolia grandiflora with dinner-plate blooms. The parking area is crammed with bicycles.
“Light-hearted. I can imagine everyone listening to lyric opera and song cycles. Everyone’s house is filled with flowers and bowls of fruit on the table. And hearty. Everyone skis and toboggans in winter. Hot chocolate and little fried pastries.”
William points out shiny community bicycle pumps along the sidewalk. He sends off a photo to his parents, both dedicated cyclists, who are up and out early, and gets an immediate reply: Sign of a superior civilization.
I did say upscale. The supernal market, Pur, has wheeled wicker shopping carts, an espresso bar, jewel-box produce, artisan flours, local cheeses. Even the milk must come from the nicest cows. Ed starts a conversation, first with the barista, then with someone else over the merits of linden honey. William collects a few snacks for the car trip—fresh apple juice, chocolate, German pretzels, baby radishes like rubies. I’m lingering over a table of handcrafted wooden cutting boards and spoons. “But you’re Italian,” I overhear.
Ed answers, “Magari. Sono Americano.” Meaning, would that I were. I’m American.
“But that’s impossible, you speak perfectly the Italian.” Music to Ed’s ears. An Italian has mistaken him for a native. This happens everywhere. One reason is that Ed talks to the taxi driver, the desk clerk, the waiter. With anyone, he starts up immediately. William and I should. When I’m complimented on my Italian, that’s because no one expects Americans to speak at all. And my southern accent invades. William is learning. This is his third summer studying with lovely Laura at Polymnia in Cortona, backed up in North Carolina by a weekly tutor. We both have that silly fear of making mistakes, whereas that doesn’t stop Ed. He realized long ago that rhythm is the thing. If you’ve got that down, you’re understood.
A little shop I like is Via Vai, at number 41, where only Italian wines and products are sold. Most of the town speaks German and sells German goods. Stefano Visintin, the owner, tells me he needed to make a stand. We’re in Italy! He compliments me on my Italian, then Ed walks in and three sentences later, here we go: “But of course you were born in Italy…”
Even though we don’t need anything, we buy rose hip tea, truffle potato chips, more chocolate—this time Italian—and plum jam. Ed, beaming. Italiano.
Both Ed and William are drawn to the sleek and fashionable mountain gear. Numerous shops lure them, and, although they are not rock climbing or taking strenuous hikes, they like the super-lightweight orange and crimson and navy jackets, the multicolored rope coils, nifty tools and backpacks. They don’t buy as much as a water bottle but they’re discussing how Prada and Dolce & Gabbana must have been influenced by mountain sports, by bicycling. Even I begin to want a cool red backpack. I drag them out to the other shops on via Portici, an arcaded street of painted houses with pretty oculus windows, and the branching of arcaded alleyways toward cafés and clothing boutiques. Most amazing is the macelleria, butcher, G. Siebenförcher—the paradigm meat market. Step into the chilly space, clean as an operating room, and see every type of salumi, speck, smoked meat, prosciutto, pancetta, sausage, plus beef, lamb, veal, fowl, pork in all cuts, venison, boar, hare, pheasant, and duck. Downstairs, cheese world.
Our trusty restaurant guides don’t give much space to Merano. We walk into Bistro Sieben, which looks fine and is. I’m becoming addicted to the local pane croccante di segale, a crunchy rye bread with seeds. We order roasted vegetable strudel, the potato and cheese dumplings. All these dumplings! May I not turn into one myself, but they are good. We have salads, too, and soon are back out on the arcaded street.
What catches my eye most in the Duomo di San Nicolò are not the bone-thin columns splaying gracefully into the ceiling, nor the precious carved pews, nor the stained-glass windows that depict the miracles of San Nicolò. All arresting—but I am most delighted by the doors’ artful ironwork. We walk all around the church, inside and out, examining this phenomenal part of the architecture and admiring the clever levers, locks, hinges, knobs, and cunningly wrought decorative flourishes. Touch them and you touch the hand of the artist.
Of the old cemetery that used to surround the Duomo, all that remains is a wall mounted with old tombstones, which leads to the octagonal Cappella di Santa Barbara, the chapel for funerals, a one-room church with round stained-glass windows with simple paisley designs, more Turkish than Austrian or Italian. Barbara, now removed from the official list of saints because of her mere legendary status, was a virgin martyr killed by her pagan father. After the deed, he was struck dead by lightning. Hence, she’s the person to pray to in a storm. Why is she here? This area used to be active in silver mining and she’s the saint for miners. Since Barbara is also the name of my older sister, I light a votive for her.
THE PUBLIC HERB garden, the walk of poets, the scent garden, the winter walk, the summer walk, castles, paths among cedars, oleanders, olives, pomegranates, more gardens. This is a genteel watering hole. One should light here for four or five days, at least, not rush through as we are. We lean on the lacy iron bridge looking down at the river rippling over rocks. A tightly groomed dog has escaped his leash and rolls in the mud. William calculates kilometers on his phone. We are anxious to get out into the mountains.