Merano historical timeline

Merano has been the centre of something twice, five hundred years apart, and the two have nothing to do with each other.

Schloss Tirol

The castle above the town was the seat of the Counts of Tyrol from the twelfth century, and the county — and eventually the whole region, and then the province — took its name from the building. Merano was its capital.

Losing it

In 1420 Duke Frederick of Habsburg moved the seat of government to Innsbruck, and Merano became a provincial market town for four centuries. The move is still mentioned locally with a certain dryness.

Andreas Hofer

The innkeeper from the Passeier valley above the town led the Tyrolean rising of 1809 against Bavarian and French rule, won on the Bergisel, was eventually captured and was shot at Mantua in 1810. He is a national hero in Tyrol, a complicated figure elsewhere, and both readings are in circulation here.

The cure

From 1836 the mild climate was marketed as a treatment for tuberculosis and convalescence. Grand hotels, promenades and a Kurhaus followed, and the visits of Empress Elisabeth in 1870 and 1889 made Merano fashionable throughout the Habsburg world.

Annexation and after

Like the rest of South Tyrol, Merano passed to Italy in 1919 and went through Fascist Italianisation, the 1939 Option and the postwar autonomy settlement. Its Italian-speaking population arrived largely in that period.

The Jewish community

A small community grew with the spa and built a synagogue in 1901; most of its members were deported or fled after 1943, and the synagogue and its small museum survive.