Centro storico di Bressanone con i Portici (Lauben)

A document of 901 names this place "Prihsna"; the town that grew from it became the oldest in the historic Tyrol. Its fifteenth- and sixteenth-century arcades, known as the Portici, form a historic commercial spine with bay windows, fountains and facades strongly marked by the Baroque.

Why it matters

Bressanone's old town is not a quarter of the city; it is the city, everything else being growth around it. The official city portal calls Bressanone the oldest town in the historic Tyrol, walled by 1150 and ruled for centuries by prince-bishops as a bridge between northern Italy and southern Germany. The medieval core is protected as artistic heritage. Its arcades, known locally as the Lauben, preserve the form of the historic market street. The portal counts more than twenty public drinking fountains in the old town.

What to notice

The Portici Maggiori and Minori—major and minor arcades—are lined with buildings dating mainly from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The portal highlights colourful facades and erker, polygonal bay windows that project over the street. The arcades connect Piazza Duomo, with its cathedral and the White Tower, to the Isarco and the old bridge quarter. More than twenty fountains, some centuries old, and painted and stuccoed Baroque facades contribute to the townscape.

Context and history

The sequence is unusually well documented. The 901 deed in which the Carolingian king Louis the Child granted the royal estate of Prihsna to the bishop of Sabiona is the town's birth certificate, kept in the diocesan archive. After the cathedral, the parish church and the bishop's palace rose on the site, the settlement grew into a town, enclosed by a wall by 1150. As seat of a prince-bishopric, Bressanone handled traffic between the German lands and Italy, and its arcades were the infrastructure of that trade. Modernity arrived by rail: with the Brenner railway in 1867, the town became a health-resort centre of southern Tyrol, a role interrupted when the First World War brought a garrison and a lazaretto and the fascist and Second World War years brought what the portal calls a new dark period. The protected core preserves that layered story in its built fabric.