ASIANOVERLAND.NET KATHMANDU TO LONDON  DAY 158/70: STUBAIER TO INNSBRUCK, AUSTRIA

 26 November, 1980

After a great day skiing at Stubaier Glacier, we try to head out of the snowfields but it’s been snowing too hard, so GRUNT is bogged again. However, with the punters all out of the bus and pushing hard, four-wheel drive works like a charm, so we manage to escape from the Tyrolian snowfields without needing to borrow a tractor, like we did at Gallipoli.

Innsbruck  is the capital of Tyrol and fifth-largest city in Austria, on the River Inn, at its junction with the Wipp Valley, which provides access to the Brenner Pass only 30 km to the south. The name means "bridge over the Inn".

Innsbruck is an internationally renowned winter sports centre, and hosted the 1964 and 1976 Winter Olympics. We take a tourist look at the Olympic ski-jump, take a photo and tick it off (pictured), without anyone being brave enough to take the ski- jump.

The earliest inhabitation was in the early Stone Age, and pre-Roman place names show the area has been populated continuously. In the 4th century, the Romans established the army station Veldidena at Oenipons (Latin for Innsbruck), to protect the commercial road from Verona-Brenner-Augsburg.

In 1248 the town passed into the hands of the Counts of Tyrol. The city's arms show a bird's-eye view of the Inn bridge, a design used since 1267. The route over the Brenner Pass was then a major transport and communications link between the north and the south of Europe, and the easiest route across the Alps. It was part of the Via Imperii, a medieval imperial road under special protection of the king. The revenues generated by serving as a transit station on this route enabled the city to flourish.

Innsbruck became the capital of all Tyrol in 1429 and in the 15th century the city became a centre of European politics and culture as Emperor Maximilian I resided in Innsbruck from the 1490s. The Golden Roof is a landmark structure located in the Old Town of Innsbruck, Austria, and is the city's most famous symbol. Completed in 1500, the “golden” roof was decorated with 2,657 fire-gilded copper tiles for Emperor Maximilian I to mark his wedding to Bianca Maria Sforza. The Emperor and his wife used the balcony to observe festivals, tournaments, and other events that took place in the square below.

The city benefited from the emperor's presence as can be seen for example in the Hofkirche (pictured), where a funeral monument for Maximilian was erected, with a cenotaph and the bronze statues of real and mythical ancestors of the Habsburg emperor.

In 1564 Ferdinand II, Archduke of Austria received the rulership over Tirol and other Austrian possessions, which were subsequently administered from Innsbruck up to the 18th century. He had Schloss Ambras built and housed his unique Renaissance collections (now in Vienna's Kunsthistorisches Museum). Up to 1665, the Habsburg dynasty ruled in Innsbruck with an independent court. In the 1620s the first opera house north of the Alps was erected in Innsbruck (Dogana).

In 1669 the Innsbruck university was founded.

During the Napoleonic Wars Tyrol was ceded to Bavaria, ally of France. Andreas Hofer led a Tyrolean peasant army to victory against the combined Bavarian and French forces, and then made Innsbruck the centre of his administration. The combined army later overran the Tyrolean militia army and until 1814 Innsbruck was part of Bavaria. After the Vienna Congress, Austrian rule was restored.

The Tyrolean hero Andreas Hofer was executed in Mantua, and his remains were returned to Innsbruck in 1823 and interred in the Franciscan church.

Until 1918, Innsbruck (one of the 4 autonomous towns in Tyrol) was part of the Austrian monarchy.

During World War I, the only recorded action taking place in Innsbruck was near the end of the war, on February 20, 1918, when Allied planes flying out of Italy raided Innsbruck.

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