Vipiteno became Italian in 1919, quite recently by Italian standards. Formerly part of the Austro-Hungarian empire, the town used to be Sterzing, renamed from the original Roman Vipitenum. Although Italian for a century now, the Austrian heritage still thrives.
We park on the edge of the village and walk down a stage-set main street that’s interrupted midway by Torre delle Dodici, a fifteenth-century clock tower dividing the old town from the “new,” though it’s hard to tell the difference. Tall houses in all the colors of macarons, with balconies of flowers, line the street. Arabesque iron shop signs, arcades, statue, fountain—a vivid scene. Lots of silly little dogs are paraded by their owners, and one couple pushes their collie in a perambulator. The dog barks like mad as they stroll. William buys a gray T-shirt and I buy a black bag to hold all the local jams and honeys we buy.
A trading center since time immemorial, Vipiteno is the northernmost town in Italy, hailing distance from the Brenner Pass, which was first mentioned around 13 B.C. The pass is where our Stone Age ancestors with icy hair scrambled from the cold down toward the sun. During Roman times, the area thrived because of silver mines. And thrives still.
We order salads at an outdoor terrace. Here comes the collie, still barking. Two women near us drink the biggest glasses of beer I’ve ever seen. The waiter is Romanian and seems to speak neither German nor Italian. We point. It works out.
AT THE TOURIST office, I unfold a map. The vacation possibilities are fabulous. The Dolomiti are well organized for any walking, hiking, skiing, tobogganing, camping, or spa experience one could dream of. The map stars trails and places to stay, from rustic to five-star, and rifugi, mountain hut stops that serve food to hikers and sometimes offer rooms. William wants to stay in one of the Tyrolian classic houses—timber porches with ornamental balustrades and flamboyant flowers lining each floor. He’s never seen The Sound of Music but a fantasy unfurls on its own: eiderdown, cheese, amber honey on bread, and goats outside. I look through brochures picturing dozens of these places. Oh, for the time to spend a month.
RIGHT IN THE centro, the frescoes in the Gothic Chiesa dello Spirito Santo show judgment day in no uncertain terms. Bodies emerge from graves and are shunted left for paradise, right for hell. Simple as that. The vaulted church feels intimate; I sit for a few moments of quiet and look at a happier fresco, Saint Christopher ferrying the Christ child across waters.
Thanks to Paul Blanchard’s Trentino–Alto Adige chapter in the Blue Guide: Northern Italy. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have known a revealing aspect of Vipiteno: the schools. Liceo Scientifico, the science high school, designed by Höller & Klotzner, and the Scuola Elementare, the elementary school designed by Cez Calderan Zanovello. The science high school’s handsome and elegant juxtaposition of glass and slatted wood and its serene spatial relationships must inspire everyone who treads the halls. Zanovello’s long colonnade supported by raw tree trunks surprises by evoking the nearby forests. Of what matters to the inhabitants of Vipiteno, the schools speak as frankly as the judgment day frescoes. What lucky students.
THE POINT OF the trip is shifting for all of us. We’re still interested in towns, but the stupefying landscapes stun us constantly. On every walk, we remark on the air. Just breathing gives you vigor. Sloping, green upland meadows (Heidi and Grandfather, where are you?), with surging streams and those dreamy Tyrolian houses that look as though fifty could live there. In the fields where hay is being racked, men are wearing lederhosen. Forked hay falls from the pitchfork in a golden tumble. We drive across the Brenner Pass into Austria, just for William to set foot in another country. But we turn right around. Back into Italy, and on into the Dolomiti!