Bruneck

Bruneck can be considered the "capital" of the Puster Valley. There is a medieval castle, now home to the Messner Mountain Museum MMM Ripa, the pride of a rich museum network. There is a beautiful old town, founded in the 13th century as a fortified village and later transformed into a characteristic and elegant urban salon, particularly along the Via Centrale (or Stadtgasse) and in Ragen di Sopra, the district at the foot of the castle: the four town gates are still preserved, the façades are enlivened by the typical protruding windows and in front of shops and cafés, pictorial decorations and wrought-iron signs abound in full splendour. There is the Chiesa del Salvatore alle Orsoline church, with its special charm, built in the 1400s leaning against the walls, so much so that the bell tower was part of the defensive structures, and the ring road passed under the cusp. Bruneck also has a tradition of tourism, summer and winter, honed by a century and a half of experience. Tourism in these parts started with the inauguration of the railway line from the Brenner Pass to Lienz (1871) and has never slowed down since then. Today, Bruneck is banking on the green and hi-tech card, thanks to an intermodal mobility plan that makes it possible to do without a car and the futuristic solutions of the NOI Techpark, a cutting-edge science and technology park in the field of sustainable mobility. Brunico celebrates its past, as witnessed in the centre by the works of art exhibited in the Civic Museum and, in the hamlet of Teodone, by the Provincial Museum of Uses and Customs of Mair am Hof, a late 17th-century nobleman's house: a pathway has been created around it among vegetable gardens, farms and craft workshops.

The excitement continues at high altitude, at Plan de Corones, an internationally renowned ski centre and the perfect location for two successful museums, the MMM Corones and the Lumen Museum of Mountain Photography. Dedicated to traditional mountaineering, the first museum tells of the "conquest" of some symbolic mountains from around the world and was designed by the archistar Zaha Hadid. The Lumen Museum of Mountain Photography, set up in the former cable car arrival station, tells the story of mountain photography and bears witness, with its restaurant, to another gift of Bruneck: the widespread passion for food and wine, with excellent productions ranging from bread to speck and cheeses.