Published: Innsbrucker Nachrichten / 24 July 1939

A train of the Innsbrucker Mittelgebirgsbahn consisting of a railcar and four trailers, which had left the Berg-Isel station yesterday at 3.15 pm, derailed in the curve below the Tantegert stop. The railcar and two trailers jumped off the tracks. The train crashed into a mast of the overhead electric line, which was torn down. Fortunately, none of the passengers on the full train were seriously injured in the accident. On the other hand, the material damage is quite significant, as the overhead line was also destroyed and the carriages were badly damaged. Train services on the low mountain railway were interrupted. It is expected to be resumed in the course of today. The local railway used several buses yesterday to transport passengers to Jgls. It has been established beyond doubt that the accident was caused by stones that were presumably placed on the tracks by boys. The local railway authority had filed a complaint because of similar incidents, which had so far been accident-free. The consequences of such irresponsible pranks are illustrated by yesterday's accident, which was not too serious.

Published: Innsbrucker Nachrichten / 27 June 1900

The last week has been particularly busy on the low mountain railway, which is now due to open. Work on the completion of the line was carried out everywhere and the design of the station buildings and stops in particular was vigorously promoted. Moreover, during the first test run, the railway was in an extraordinarily advanced state of completion, considering that the construction work was only started in August of last year and that almost the entire winter, although not particularly mild, still significantly hinders and delays the construction of a mountain railway. Well then, the work is finished, the embankment and railway line run smoothly, the embankments look as if they have been treated with trickle track and in many cases young greenery is already sprouting up from the embankments and slopes from the backfilled or excavated soil.

The Innsbruck low mountain railway branches off from the Berg Isel station of the Innsbruck-Hall local railway to the south, immediately crosses the Wiltenerbach in a tunnel, through which a road will then run in the future, first by means of a bridge and describes a large semicircle to the west, then to the Sillthale and immediately afterwards the Sill river itself. From here it runs along the old road and in the course of the road up to Vill, crosses the road leading to Igls and Ambras on the hill, continues on a moderate incline from Vill to the new mountain railway road (whose route turns slightly to the south-east) to Igls, where the new stop offers a very beautiful view of the Jochatz stop and passing point at 472 m above sea level (at Kl 4 42), also known as the "Innsbrucker Waldbahn", situated in the middle of a quiet forest solitude, whereupon the Wirtshaus stop is reached in an ascent at kilometre 5.7, from where a new carriage connection runs up to the aforementioned hotel and now in renewed connection with the old side valley of the Villnau valley from below up to Kessel, where until a few years ago the old, already mentioned farm of the Innsbrucker Berg Isel valley was. A station and hut for the railway control room has been built in this basin. The railway now continues over tree ridges and clearings in the low mountain forests, between fields and orchards to the terminus at Igls, which is close to the short Igls station.

The total length of the railway from Mount Isel to Igls station is 8.45 kilometres. With regard to the gradient, the following information may be of general interest: At the Berg Isel station of the local railway, the line begins at an altitude of 588-4 metres above sea level; the terminus at Igls is 872-5 metres above sea level, so that a difference in altitude of 272-5 metres has to be overcome over a distance of 8.45 kilometres, which corresponds to an average gradient of 32-29%o. As the carriages run horizontally or in 15% curves, a passing siding is recommended, the stops are objectively located both on the route to the turnaround point at the inn and to Igls so that the stops can be reached by passengers within a short distance of the inhabited villages.

Only two important viaducts had to be built, the large viaduct with four openings for the viaduct over the Sillthal and the smaller one at Innsbruck-Amtshaus. Two tunnels were also required, the longer of 42 metres at Kl 2-45 was continuous, the other of 19 metres at Kl 4-45 was short; furthermore a series of larger and smaller regulators for water drainage and water passage. In addition, the Jochatz stop and diversion point was installed at several points (at Kl 1-42).

Only government work had to be accepted for the construction of the railway, as the particular technical difficulties made it necessary to refrain from awarding the work to private contractors. It must therefore be emphasised all the more that the management and the technical staff involved in the construction worked in an excellent manner. The management of the construction work was entrusted to the municipal chief engineer Josef Riehl, who was assisted by the experienced state railway inspector R. M. Wilhelm as technical advisor, the engineer Karl Ammerle from Bolzano and the foreman Josef Kirchner from Matrei, as well as the previously mentioned site manager Franz Schaffenrath, who was selected by engineer Riehl for his quiet and efficient work. All the officials and labourers involved in the construction worked under the aforementioned technical command, and the general transport authority, as well as the passenger carriages and the freight wagon used during the test run, expressed the greatest satisfaction.

The most significant difficulties arose in meeting the huge demand for timber for the railway sleepers and the construction of protective structures at various points against avalanches and rockfall, which was of particular importance on a mountain railway that stretched for so long in lonely forests and bushy valleys. The city of Innsbruck had organised the felling of its very extensive forests as rationally as possible with regard to its requirements, but still had to make considerable use of the Frommenwalde and other high forests near the railway line in order to fully cover the enormous demand.

The total construction costs of the railway amounted to approx. 1,100,000 K. The railway was financed in such a way that the city of Innsbruck contributed 300,000 K. Private individuals provided 240,000 K. in bonds, while engineer Josef Riehl contributed 60,000 K. Stammactien and with 500,000 K. State contribution, the state railway took over for the city.

So much for the overview of this remarkable construction of a new and certainly very important and beneficial work for the ever-growing culture of Innsbruck, which, completed in a short time, will join the series of major railway projects, which, in view of the fast and efficient connection of the high mountain resorts with the city, appear to be of inestimable value for the population, and the Central Bureau of our Provincial Tourist Association has already drawn attention to the new Innsbruck mountain railway through notes in more than a hundred outstanding foreign newspapers, as well as the inclusion of the same in the XXIX edition of the travel guide which has just been published. edition of the Baedeker travel guide.

In 1830, the world’s first public railway line for passenger traffic, operated by a steam locomotive, was put into service between Liverpool and Manchester. Shortly thereafter, this new means of transport rapidly spread across the entire continent. Until then, travel had been expensive, long, and arduous—undertaken by carriage, on horseback, or on foot—something that hardly anyone did at all, and certainly not with pleasure. Innsbruck’s mayor, Joseph Valentin Maurer (1797–1843), recognized the importance of the railway as an opportunity for the Alpine region at an early stage. In 1836, he advocated the construction of a railway line in order to make the beautiful but hard-to-reach region accessible to as broad and affluent a public as possible and to re-establish Innsbruck as a European transport hub during economically difficult times for the city. The first practical pioneer of railway transport in Tyrol was Alois von Negrelli (1799–1858). At the end of the 1830s, when the first railway lines of the Danube Monarchy were being put into operation in the eastern parts of the empire, he presented an “Expert Report on the Route of a Railway from Innsbruck via Kufstein to the Royal Bavarian Border at the Otto Chapel near Kiefersfelden.” Negrelli, later one of the many intellectual fathers of the Suez Canal, had served in his youth in the Imperial and Royal Building Directorate in Innsbruck and knew the city well. His report already contained sketches and a cost estimate. As a location for the main railway station, he had proposed the area around the Triumphal Arch and the Hofgarten. In a letter, he expressed himself about the railway line through his former home city as follows:

"...I also hear with the deepest sympathy that the railway from Innsbruck to Kufstein is being taken seriously, as the Laage is very suitable for this and the area along the Inn is so rich in natural products and so populated that I cannot doubt its success, nor will I fail to take an active part in it myself and through my business friends when it comes to the purchase of shares. You have no idea of the new life that such an endeavour will awaken in the other side..."

Friedrich List (1789–1846), known as the father of the German railway, proposed a railway connection from the northern German Hanseatic cities through Tyrol to the Italian Adriatic. The intellectual liberal economist and advocate of the largest possible customs union in Central Europe saw the expansion of the railway network as the key to economic prosperity. On the Austrian side, Carl Ritter von Ghega (1802–1860) inherited overall responsibility for the railway project within the vast Habsburg Empire after Negrelli’s early death. List did not live to see his dream of a meaningfully connected Central European economic area fulfilled; in despair over the conservative political situation in the German states, he shot himself in 1846 on Tyrolean soil in Kufstein. Five years later, Austria and Bavaria declared their intention in a treaty to build a railway line to the Tyrolean capital. In May 1855, construction began on what was then the largest building site Innsbruck had ever witnessed. The station area was created between Museumstraße, Pradl, and Wilten. The station forecourt soon became one of the new centers of the city. Modern hotels were no longer located in the old town but here. To the east, the tracks led out of the city over newly constructed viaducts. On November 24, 1858, after only three years of construction, the railway line between Innsbruck and Kufstein—and onward via Rosenheim to Munich—was opened. The line was ahead of its time. Unlike the rest of the railway network, which was only privatized in 1860, it was opened as a private railway from the outset, operated by the previously established Imperial and Royal Privileged Southern State, Lombardian, Venetian, and Central Italian Railway Company. This move allowed the expensive construction to be kept out of Austria’s perpetually strained state budget. With this opening toward the eastern parts of the monarchy, especially Munich, the first step toward the modernization of Tyrol had been taken. Goods and passengers could now be transported quickly and comfortably between Bavaria and the Alps. In South Tyrol, the first trains ran between Verona and Trento in the spring of 1859.

The north–south corridor, however, initially remained incomplete. Serious considerations for the Brenner Railway began in 1847. Conflicts south of the Brenner Pass and the economic necessity of connecting the two parts of the region led, in 1854, to the establishment of the Permanent Central Fortification Commission. After Austria’s loss of Lombardy in the war with France and Sardinia-Piedmont in 1859, the project was delayed due to political instability in northern Italy. In 1860, the Imperial and Royal Privileged Southern State, Lombardian, Venetian, and Central Italian Railway Company was reorganized as the Imperial and Royal Privileged Southern Railway Company in order to begin detailed planning. The following year, the mastermind behind this outstanding infrastructure project, engineer Carl von Etzel (1812–1865), began surveying the terrain and drawing up concrete plans for the railway line. The planners were instructed by the private investors to keep costs as low as possible and to avoid large viaducts and bridges. Contrary to Ghega’s earlier considerations of mitigating the gradient by starting the line in Hall, Etzel developed a plan that included Innsbruck. Together with his construction manager Achilles Thommen, he selected the Sill Gorge as the best route. This not only saved seven kilometers of track and considerable expense but also secured Innsbruck’s status as a key transport hub. The alpine terrain, landslides, snowstorms, and floods posed major challenges for the builders. River courses had to be diverted, rocks blasted, earthworks excavated, and retaining walls built to control nature. The greatest difficulties, however, were caused by the war in Italy that broke out in 1866. Particularly patriotic German-speaking workers refused to work alongside the “enemy.” Fourteen thousand Italian-speaking workers had to be dismissed before construction could continue. Nevertheless, the highest regular railway line in the world at the time, with its 22 tunnels blasted out of rock, was completed in a remarkably short period. How many men lost their health or lives during the construction of the Brenner Railway is unknown.

The opening ceremony was remarkably understated. Many people were uncertain about the new technology. Economic sectors such as horse-drawn freight services and post stations along the Brenner route faced decline, as had already been seen with the disappearance of rafting after the opening of the railway to the lower Inn valley. Even during construction, farmers had protested, fearing the import of agricultural goods and the resulting loss of income. As with the construction phase, no grand celebration was held. Due to the execution of Archduke Maximilian of Mexico, the brother of Emperor Franz Joseph I, Austria was in a state of mourning. Instead of a priestly blessing and festive inauguration, the Southern Railway Company donated 6,000 gulden to the poor fund. Even the Innsbrucker Nachrichten did not mention the revolution in transportation, apart from reporting on the last express carriage over the Brenner and publishing the railway timetable.

(The last express coach). Yesterday evening at half past seven the last express coach to South Tyrol departed from here. The oldest postilion in Innsbruck was driving the horses, his hat was fluttered with mourning, and the carriage was decorated with branches of weeping willows for the last journey. Two marksmen travelling to Matrei were the only passengers to pay their last respects to the express coach. In the last days of 1797, the beautiful, otherwise so lively and now deserted road was conspicuously dead.

Until the opening of the railway line over the Brenner Pass on 24 August 1867, Innsbruck was a terminus station of regional importance. The new, spectacular Brenner railway across the Alps connected the northern and southern parts of the country as well as Germany and Italy. The new Brenner road had already opened the year before. The Alps had lost their divisive character and their terror for transit, at least a little. While an estimated 20,000 people crossed the Brenner in 1865, three years later in the first full year of operation of the railway line there were around ten times as many. In addition, a whole flood of goods found their way across the new north-south axis, boosting trade and consumption.

The second alpine obstacle that had to be overcome for territorial unity was the Arlberg. Initial plans for a railway line connecting the Lake Constance region with the rest of the Danube Monarchy existed as early as 1847, but the project was repeatedly postponed. In 1871, export bans on food due to the Franco‑Prussian War led to famine in Vorarlberg, because supplies could not be transported quickly enough from the eastern parts of the vast empire to the far west. The economic crisis of 1873 delayed construction yet again. Only seven years later did parliament decide to realize the railway line. In the same year, complex construction work began east and west of the Arlberg massif. A total of 38 mountain streams and 54 avalanche-prone zones had to be secured with 3,100 structures under precarious alpine weather conditions. The most remarkable achievement was the ten-kilometer-long tunnel carrying two tracks. On June 30, 1883, the last transport of mail by horse-drawn carriage departed from Innsbruck to Landeck in a ceremonially mournful setting. The very next day, the railway took over this service. With the opening of the railway from Innsbruck to Landeck and the final completion of the Arlberg Railway to Bludenz in 1884—including the breakthrough of the Arlberg tunnel—Innsbruck was once again definitively established as a transport hub between Germany and Italy, France, Switzerland, and Vienna. In 1904 the Stubai Valley Railway, and in 1912 the Mittenwald Railway, were opened. Both projects were planned by Josef Riehl (1842–1917).

For a large part of the population, the railway was the most directly perceptible sign of progress. The railway viaducts, built from Hötting breccia quarried nearby, formed a physical and visible boundary to the east of the city toward Pradl. However, the railway did not change the region only from a technical perspective—it brought immense social transformation. Workers, students, soldiers, and tourists streamed into the city in large numbers, bringing new ways of life and ideas with them. Josef Leitgeb described this transformation in his novel The Untouched Year as follows:

“Even then, the railway had already brought many newcomers to Wilten. They lived in the new tall buildings that were springing up everywhere on land where grain had grown for centuries. Yet they were still perceived as outsiders; their Czech, Slovenian, and Hungarian names did not fit into the familiar sounds. They wore cheap ready-made clothing bought on installment, avoided church services, and instead attended meetings where the established citizens felt out of place. Seen clearly, they were quiet, hardworking, thrifty people who had simply brought different ways of life from the large cities and the lowlands. Anyone who looked at them askance could claim no other justification than that they did not want spectators for their own comfort. Nevertheless, the rejection of newcomers by the locals was still clearly palpable at the time; the father once heard a sermon in which the priest assured that all people could attain eternal salvation—‘even robbers and murderers, yes, even railwaymen.’”

The Federal Railway Directorate of the Imperial and Royal General Directorate of the Austrian State Railways in Innsbruck was one of only three directorates in Cisleithania. New social classes emerged as a result of the railway as an employer. People from all strata of society were needed to keep railway operations running. Workers and craftsmen could experience social advancement within the railway, similar to opportunities in state administration or the military. New professions such as track keeper, conductor, stoker, or locomotive driver emerged. Working for the railway carried a certain prestige. Not only was one part of the most modern industry of the time; titles and uniforms turned employees and workers into figures of respect. By 1870, Innsbruck’s population had grown from 12,000 to 17,000, largely due to the economic impulses generated by the railway. Local producers benefited from the ability to import and export goods quickly and at low cost. The labor market changed. Before the railway lines were opened, nine out of ten Tyroleans worked in agriculture; after the opening of the Brenner Railway, this figure dropped to below 70%. The new mode of transport contributed to social democratization and the rise of a bourgeois society. Not only wealthy tourists but also ordinary subjects—those who did not belong to the upper class—could now take excursions into the surrounding area. New foods altered people’s diets. The first department stores appeared with the arrival of consumer goods that had previously been unavailable. The appearance of Innsbruck’s inhabitants changed with new, fashionable clothing that became affordable for many for the first time. Not everyone welcomed this development. Shipping on the Inn River, previously an important transport route, almost immediately came to a standstill. The already weakened lower nobility and particularly strict clergy feared the collapse of local agriculture and a final moral decline due to the presence of strangers in the city.

The railway was worth its weight in gold for tourism. It was now possible to reach the remote and exotic mountain world of the Tyrolean Alps. Health resorts such as Igls and entire valleys such as the Stubaital, as well as Innsbruck city transport, benefited from the development of the railway. 1904 years later, the Stubai Valley Railway was the first Austrian railway with alternating current to connect the side valley with the capital. On 24 December 1904, 780,000 crowns, the equivalent of around 6 million euros, were subscribed as capital stock for tram line 1. In the summer of the following year, the line connected the new districts of Pradl and Wilten with Saggen and the city centre. Three years later, Line 3 opened the next inner-city public transport connection, which only ran to the remote village in 1942 after Amras was connected to Innsbruck.

The railway was also of great importance to the military. As early as 1866, at the Battle of Königgrätz between Austria and Prussia, it was clear how important troop transport would be in the future. Until 1918, Austria was a huge empire that stretched from Vorarlberg and Tyrol in the south-west to Galicia, an area in what is now Poland, and Ukraine in the east. The Brenner Railway was needed to reinforce the turbulent southern border with its new neighbour, the Kingdom of Italy. Tyrolean soldiers were also deployed in Galicia during the first years of the First World War until Italy declared war on Austria. When the front line was opened up in South Tyrol, the railway was important for moving troops quickly from the east of the empire to the southern front.

Carl von Etzel, who did not live to see the opening of the Brenner railway, is commemorated today by Ing.-Etzel-Straße in Saggen along the railway viaducts. Josef Riehl is commemorated by Dr.-Ing.-Riehl-Straße in Wilten near the Westbahnhof railway station. There is also a street dedicated to Achilles Thommen. As a walker or cyclist, you can cross the Karwendel Bridge in the Höttinger Au one floor below the Karwendel railway and admire the steel framework. You can get a good impression of the golden age of the railway by visiting the ÖBB administration building in Saggen or the listed Westbahnhof railway station in Wilten. In the viaduct arches in Saggen, you can enjoy Innsbruck's nightlife in one of the many pubs covered by history.

In the 1990s, an Austrian television series caused a scandal. Die Piefke Saga, written by the Tyrolean author Felix Mitterer, portrayed in four darkly humorous and revealing episodes the relationship between the German tourist family Sattmann and their hosts in a fictional Tyrolean holiday resort. Despite all justified criticism of modern tourism and its sometimes extreme excesses, one should not forget that tourism in the nineteenth century was an important driving force for the development of Innsbruck and its surroundings—not only economically. The first travellers to visit Innsbruck were pilgrims and “business people” of the early modern period. Merchants, journeymen on their travels, officials, soldiers, entourages of visiting nobility, skilled labourers, miners, clergy, pilgrims, and scholars were the earliest “tourists” attracted to the city between Italy and the German lands. Travel was expensive, dangerous, and arduous. Moreover, many subjects were not permitted to leave their place of origin without the consent of their feudal lord or abbot. Those who travelled usually did so on foot. Although Innsbruck’s inns and taverns profited from travellers as early as the Middle Ages and the early modern period, tourism in the modern sense did not yet exist. This began only when a few eccentrics were first drawn to mountain peaks. For this to happen, not only was a growing middle class required, but also a new perception of the Alps. For a long time, mountains had been regarded purely as a threat. It was primarily the British who, having explored the world’s oceans, now sought to conquer its mountain ranges as well. From the late eighteenth century onward, during the Romantic period, travel accounts began to spread the idea of the natural beauty of the Alps. The first foreign-language travel guide to Tyrol, Travels through the Rhaetian Alps by Jean François Beaumont, appeared in 1796. In addition to the alpine scenery, it was also the “wild and exotic natives” of Tyrol that fascinated international audiences. The bearded rebel Andreas Hofer, who had managed to challenge Napoleon’s army with a peasant force, attracted as much attention in Britain—the traditional enemy of France—as among German nationalists north of the Alps, who saw in him a kind of proto-German figure. Tyroleans were perceived as a stubborn, archetypal, and untamed people, comparable to the Germanic tribes under Arminius who had once resisted the Roman Empire. Descriptions of Innsbruck by authors such as Beda Weber (1798–1858), along with other travel accounts in the rapidly expanding press landscape, helped shape an attractive image of the city.

The next step was to make the wild Alpine environment accessible to a growing number of tourists who wished to emulate early adventurers, even if their willingness to take risks and their physical fitness fell short. In 1869, the German Alpine Club established a section in Innsbruck, following the relatively unsuccessful founding of the Austrian Alpine Club in 1862. Driven by the Greater German idea shared by many members, the two associations merged in 1873. To this day, the Alpine Club retains a largely bourgeois character, while its social-democratic counterpart is the organisation Naturfreunde. The network of hiking trails expanded, as did the number of mountain huts capable of hosting guests. As a transit region, Tyrol already possessed numerous mule tracks and footpaths that had existed for centuries and now formed the basis for alpine tourism. Small inns, farms, and stations along postal routes served as accommodation. Key figures such as the Tyrolean theologian Franz Senn (1831–1884) and Adolf Pichler (1819–1900) were instrumental in surveying Tyrol and creating maps. Contrary to popular belief, the Tyroleans were not born mountaineers but had to learn how to master the alpine environment; previously, mountains had been viewed mainly as dangerous obstacles in agricultural life. The Alpine clubs also trained mountain guides. Around the turn of the century, skiing began to gain popularity alongside hiking and mountaineering. Ski lifts did not yet exist; to climb mountains, skins were attached to skis—a practice still used in ski touring today. Only from the 1920s onward, with the construction of cable cars to the Nordkette and Patscherkofel, did a wealthier clientele begin to enjoy the modern luxury of mechanised mountain access.

This development required new hotels, cafés, inns, shops, and modes of transport to meet the needs of visitors. Guests accustomed to running water and telephones in cities like London or Paris were not willing to accept basic conditions such as outdoor toilets. Inns of the first and second class were suitable for transit travellers but not equipped for more discerning tourists. Until the nineteenth century, innkeepers in Innsbruck and the surrounding villages belonged to the upper middle class in terms of income, but their profession was not considered particularly prestigious. Many were farmers who supplemented their income by serving food and drink. As local meeting points and hubs in postal and goods networks, inns were centres of information, yet innkeeping did not carry the status of a guild profession or bourgeois occupation. This changed with the professionalisation of tourism. Entrepreneurs such as Robert Nißl, who acquired Büchsenhausen Castle in 1865 and transformed it into a brewery, or Johann Gruber of the inn Zum Riesen Haymon, invested in tourism infrastructure. Former aristocratic estates such as Weiherburg were converted into inns and hotels. In Innsbruck, the true transformation did not occur on the barricades of 1848 but later, within the tourism sector, as ambitious citizens replaced aristocrats as owners of estates.

The Österreichischer Hof, opened in 1849, dominated early modern hospitality but was not yet a true grand hotel. That distinction only came with the opening of the Grand Hotel Europa in 1869. In 1892, the Habsburger Hof followed, offering modern comforts such as electric lighting—a sensation at the time. Hotels like the Kaiserhof and Arlberger Hof were located near the railway station, which at the time represented the centre of modern urban life rather than the congested traffic hubs of today.

Visitor numbers grew steadily. Shortly before the First World War, Innsbruck recorded around 200,000 guests annually. A report from June 1896 noted:

“Tourism in Innsbruck in the month of May amounted to 5,647 persons, including 2,763 from Austria-Hungary, 1,974 from the German Empire, 282 English, 65 Italians, 68 French, 53 Americans, 51 Russians, and 388 from various other countries.”

In addition to the sheer number of travellers influencing life in the small town of Innsbruck, it was also the international character of its visitors that gradually gave the city a new face. Beyond purely tourist infrastructure, general modern developments were also accelerated. Wealthy guests could hardly be expected to frequent inns with cesspits behind the building. While a sewage system would inevitably have been built sooner or later, the economic importance of tourism enabled and accelerated the allocation of funds for the major infrastructure projects of the turn of the century. This transformation affected not only the city’s appearance but also the everyday lives and working conditions of its inhabitants. Enterprising individuals such as Heinrich Menardi succeeded in expanding the value chain by offering paid leisure activities in addition to accommodation and food. In 1880, he founded the carriage hire and later automobile rental service Heinrich Menardi for excursions into the Alpine surroundings. Initially using horse-drawn carriages, and after the First World War buses and cars, affluent tourists were transported as far as Venice. The company still exists today and is now headquartered in the Menardi building at Wilhelm‑Greil‑Straße 17, opposite Landhausplatz, although it has since shifted from transport and trade to the more lucrative real estate sector. Local retail also benefited from the affluent international clientele. By 1909, there were already three dedicated tourist equipment shops in the city, alongside the fashionable department stores that had opened just a few years earlier.

Innsbruck and its surrounding areas also became known for spa tourism—the precursor of today’s wellness industry—where wealthy guests recovered from a wide range of ailments in an alpine environment. Spa facilities existed in Egerdach near Amras, in Mentlberg, and in Mühlau. Establishments such as the Igler Hof (then the Grand Hotel Igler Hof) and the Sporthotel Igls still retain some of the charm of that era. Michael Obexer, founder of the spa resort in Igls and owner of the grand hotel, was a pioneer of tourism. Although these facilities never achieved the international fame of major spa destinations such as Bad Ischl, Marienbad, or Baden near Vienna—as evidenced by historical photographs and postcards—the treatments offered, including brine baths, steam therapies, gymnastics, and even “magnetism,” corresponded to what was considered state of the art at the time and still partially resonates in today’s wellness practices. Perhaps the most spectacular tourism project Innsbruck ever experienced was “Hoch‑Innsbruck,” today known as the Hungerburg. Not only the funicular railway and hotels were built there; even an artificial lake was created after the turn of the century to attract visitors.

One of the former landowners in the Hungerburg area and a pioneer of Innsbruck tourism, Richard von Attlmayr, played a key role in the predecessor organisation of today’s tourism association. Since 1881, the Innsbruck Beautification Association had been concerned with meeting the growing needs of visitors. The association developed walking and hiking paths, installed benches, and opened up hard-to-access areas such as the Mühlauer Gorge and the Sill Gorge. The distinctive green benches along many paths still serve as a reminder of this organisation, which continues to exist today. Seven years later, in 1888, those benefiting from tourism in Innsbruck founded the Commission for the Promotion of Tourism, the predecessor of today’s tourism board. Through joint efforts in marketing and quality assurance among accommodation providers, businesses hoped to further stimulate tourism.

“Each year the number of overseas pilgrims visiting our country and its glacier-crowned mountains increases, much to the annoyance of our friendly Swiss neighbours, and many a fine dollar is left behind. The English are beginning to find Tyrol just as interesting as Switzerland, and the number of French and Dutch visitors spending the summer here grows year by year.”

Postcards became the first mass-market “influencers” in the history of tourism. Many businesses produced their own postcards, and publishers created countless images of the city’s most popular sights. It is striking what was considered worth seeing at the time. Unlike today, it was primarily the modern achievements of the city that were depicted: the Leopold Fountain, the city café near the theatre, the chain bridge, the cog railway to the Hungerburg, or the Stefansbrücke (opened in 1845), a stone arch bridge crossing the Sill. Andreas Hofer also served as an effective testimonial on postcards: the Schupfen inn, where he had established his headquarters, and the Bergisel with the large Andreas Hofer monument were popular motifs.

In 1914, Innsbruck had 17 hotels attracting visitors, supplemented by summer and winter holidaymakers in Igls and the Stubai Valley. The First World War abruptly brought this first wave of tourism to an end. Just as tourism began to recover in the late 1920s, the global economic crisis and Hitler’s 1,000-mark travel restriction in 1933—introduced to pressure the Austrian government into lifting the ban on the Nazi Party—dealt further blows.

It took the economic boom of the 1950s and 1960s to revive tourism in Innsbruck after the destruction. Between 1955 and 1972, overnight stays in Tyrol increased fivefold. Following the hardships of the war years and the reconstruction of Europe’s economy, tourism became a stable source of income for Tyrol and Innsbruck, extending even beyond official hotels and guesthouses. Many Innsbruck families crowded more tightly into their already small apartments in order to rent out beds to foreign guests and supplement their income. Tourism not only brought foreign currency but also enabled locals to develop a new sense of identity, both internally and externally. At the same time, increasing prosperity allowed more Innsbruck residents to travel abroad themselves. The beaches of Italy became particularly popular destinations. Former wartime enemies thus became guests and hosts to one another.

In the year 15 before the Common Era, the field commanders Tiberius and Drusus, both stepsons of Emperor Augustus, reached the northern Alpine region with their armies. While the modern Italian today comes to Tyrol for Christmas markets in winter and more tolerable temperatures in summer, at that time it was the power ambitions of the rising superpower that made the legionaries lace up their sandals. Drusus marched from Verona to Trient, then followed the Adige River over the Brenner Pass into the area of present-day Innsbruck. From the Roman strategic perspective, the conquest was long overdue. Roman troops stationed in Gaul in the west and Illyricum on the Adriatic in the east were to be connected, raids by barbarian peoples into northern Italian settlements prevented, and routes for trade, travelers, and the military expanded and secured. Contrary to how it is often portrayed, the mountainous land was not terra incognita for the Romans. The Inn Valley had not become a permanently inhabited zone only with the climatic warming known as the Roman Climate Optimum. Trade and cultural exchange extending as far as central Italy can be demonstrated through archaeological finds. Partly multi-storey houses with stone foundations, clustered in nucleated villages, similar linguistic idioms, burnt-offering sites such as the Goldbühel in Igls, and ceramic finds point to a shared cultural background with the Etruscans. Finds indicate economic exchange between ethnic groups and communities stretching from Vorarlberg through the Lake Garda region to Istria, even though the Romans liked to depict the militarily inferior Alpine inhabitants as wild barbarians. The conquered peoples north of the main Alpine ridge were referred to by Greek and Roman authors using the rather vague collective term “Raeti.” Today, research understands the Raeti to have been the inhabitants of Tyrol, the Lower Engadine, and Trentino—the area of the Fritzens–Sanzeno culture, named after its major archaeological sites. The tribe living in the area of present-day Innsbruck was given the name Breones by the new rulers. The settlements of the Breonic population were located in mid-mountain elevations and on higher alluvial fans such as Amras and Wilten, slightly above the Inn Valley, which at the time was a floodplain and marshland. Whether the Romans destroyed settlements and cult sites between Zirl and Wattens during their campaign of conquest is unclear. What is certain is that the burnt-offering site on the Goldbühel in Igls was no longer used after the year 15. There are also no precise sources regarding how the conquerors treated the subdued population.

Roman military power was followed by Roman administration and the legal system. Already under Augustus’ successor Tiberius, an administrative structure was rolled out and the new territory integrated into the state system. What is now Tyrol was divided along the Ziller River. The area east of the Ziller became part of the province of Noricum, while Innsbruck became part of the province Raetia et Vindelicia. This province extended from present-day central Switzerland with the Gotthard massif in the west to the Alpine foreland north of Lake Constance, from the Brenner Pass in the south to the Ziller River in the east. Remarkably, the Ziller as a boundary still persists today in ecclesiastical terms: the area east of the Ziller belongs to the Diocese of Salzburg, while Tyrol west of the Ziller is part of the Diocese of Innsbruck. It likely did not take long for the former barbarians to assimilate into Roman culture. While the Romans did not bring chewing gum, vinyl records, or silk stockings for their new subjects—as would be the case nearly 2,000 years later—the Roman lifestyle certainly introduced new possibilities. The route between what is now the Seefeld Saddle and the Brenner Pass had existed for centuries but was unsuitable for trade or troop movements. In the 3rd century CE, the Brenner route was expanded into a via publica. Slightly over five meters wide, it ran from the Brenner Pass to the Ferrariwiese above Wilten, over Mount Isel, to what is today the Gasthaus Haymon, where the Roman military camp Veldidena was located. As the Via Raetia, this road competed with the Via Claudia Augusta, which connected Italy and Bavaria via the Reschen and Fern passes. For poorly equipped merchant caravans, the Brenner route was in parts too steep to become the main route, but through the road network Veldidena was now integrated into an economic and intellectual space stretching from Britain through the Baltic region to North Africa. At intervals of 20 to 40 kilometers, way stations (mansiones) with accommodation, food, and stables were established. In Sterzing, at the Brenner, in Matrei, and in Innsbruck, villages developed around these Roman mansiones, where Roman culture gradually took hold. The local population began to exploit their role as a transit and supply region. Along the trade routes, smithies emerged as an early form of metalworking industry, as well as taverns and inns. With an imperial edict in 212 CE, the Breonic population became full Roman citizens, with all associated rights and obligations. Military service in the Roman army offered opportunities for social advancement. After Christianity became the state religion in the 4th century, the Tyrolean region was also Christianized, starting from the Diocese of Brixen. By that time, cultural achievements such as the imperial coinage system, glass and brick production, the Latin language, bathhouses, thermal baths, schools, and wine had long since become standard. There was probably no Breonic People’s Front, but the famous quote from Life of Brian could just as well have been uttered in pre-Christian Innsbruck:

"Apart from medicine, sanitation, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, water treatment and public health insurance, what, I ask you, have the Romans ever done for us?"

Very little of Roman Innsbruck remains visible in the modern cityscape. Exhibits can be seen at the Tyrolean State Museum Ferdinandeum. Various excavation projects around the present-day Wilten Abbey uncovered graves and remains such as walls, coins, bricks, and everyday objects from the Roman period in Innsbruck. The core of the Leuthaus next to the abbey dates back to Roman times. One of the Roman milestones from the former main route over the Brenner can be seen in Wiesengasse near the Tivoli Stadium. Even less has survived of the Breones themselves. Near Lake Lans, visitors can explore remains of Raetian houses, and just below Mount Isel, the former cult site Goldbühel welcomes interested visitors.