After visiting Oberammergau and Linderhof Palace, we retraced our route back into Austria for a stop in Innsbruck.
The city is the capital of the Austrian state of Tyrol, and its history goes way back to the Middle Ages. It was a strategic crossing point for the Inn River on the trade route from northern Italy (Verona) to Germany (Augsburg) over the Brenner Pass . . . the route we took from Venice.
Tyrol, including Innsbruck, has been a geo-political football for centuries. It became part of Bavaria during the Napoleonic Wars of the early 19th century, but was restored to Austria in 1814. Then in 1938 Austria was annexed by Nazi Germany, and the Nazis established two subcamps of the Dachau concentration camp (outside of Munich - about which, more in a later post) in Innsbruck to house high-profile political prisoners and their families from 16 countries as hostages during WWII. Between 1943 and April 1945, Innsbruck experienced twenty-two air raids and suffered heavy damage.
Many of the city's historic buildings survived the Allied bombing, including the Goldenes Dachl (Golden Roof), considered the city's most famous symbol, which was completed in 1500 and decorated with 2,657 fire-gilded copper tiles to commemorate the third marriage of Emperor Maximilian I which occurred in 1494:
. . . and right across the street, the Helblinghaus, built in the 1400s with Rococo stucco decorations added in the early 1700s:
The Stadtturm (City Tower), built in 1450:
. . . and the St. Anne's Column, built in 1706 to commemorate the withdrawal of Bavarian troops from the Tyrol region during the War of the Spanish Succession -- another one of those geo-political football periods for Tyrol and Innsbruck:
Uppermost in my mind, however, were not the architectural landmarks nor the geo-political history. For me, the attraction was the Winter Olympics held in Innsbruck two years earlier. They were the third Winter Olympics to be televised internationally, and being a child of the Golden Age of Television, I was culturally conditioned to ascribe value to things depicted on TV: if something -- or some place -- had been on TV or in the movies, then it must be important.
So I was most interested in the structures and symbols of the Innsbruck Olympics, the most dramatic of which was the Olympic cauldron at the Bergisel ski jump stadium, where the Olympic flame burned throughout the games.
Here's the stadium and ski jump itself:
And here's what the skier sees when he/she leaps from the take-off table at the end of the ramp into the air going 60 mph:
Pretty awesome view, eh? But what you might not notice is what's visible just beyond the stadium, here:
If you look closely, you can see it's a cemetery next to a cathedral!
I think I'd rather go for a run.
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