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[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_toggle title=\"The power of geography\" open=\"on\" open_toggle_text_color=\"#E09900\u2033 open_toggle_background_color=\"#FFFFFF\" closed_toggle_text_color=\"#E09900\u2033 closed_toggle_background_color=\"#FFFFFF\" icon_color=\"#E09900\u2033 open_icon_color=\"#E09900\u2033 admin_label=\"The power of geography\" _builder_version=\"4.27.4\u2033 _module_preset=\"default\" title_text_color=\"#E09900\u2033 title_font_size=\"18px\" hover_enabled=\"0\u2033 border_radii=\"on|5px|5px|5px|5px\" border_width_all=\"0px\" box_shadow_style=\"preset1\u2033 global_module=\"57292\u2033 saved_tabs=\"all\" global_colors_info=\"{}\" sticky_enabled=\"0\u2033]<\/p>\n
What most visitors to Innsbruck notice first are the mountains, which seem to encircle the city. The mountain landscape is not only beautiful to behold, but has always influenced many aspects of life in the city. This begins with seemingly minor things such as the weather, as the perspective of the theologian, writer, and politician Beda Weber from earlier times demonstrates:<\/p>\n
„\u201cA phenomenon of its own is the warm wind, or Scirocco. It comes from the south, strikes the northern mountains, and then plunges violently into the valley. It often causes headaches, but quickly melts the winter snow masses and greatly promotes fertility. This makes the cultivation of maize possible in Innsbruck.\u201d<\/em>„<\/p>\n This weather phenomenon may have changed its name from Scirocco to F\u00f6hn, and traffic was not yet a major problem in 1851. Yet just as Innsbruck\u2019s motorists complain today, the horseshoer in the old town in 1450 and the legionary dispatched from central Italy to the Alps in the year 350 certainly lamented the warm downslope wind that seems to drive everyone mad several times a month. While people in the past were grateful for the warm air that melted snow on the fields, today tourism officials complain about snow-free ski slopes on the Seegrube.<\/p>\n The location between the Wipptal valley in the south and the Nordkette mountain range not only influences the frequency of migraines, but also the leisure activities of Innsbruck residents, as Weber also recognised. \"The locals are characterised by their cheerfulness and charity, they especially love shore excursions in the beautiful season.\"<\/em> One may talk about Kindness and benevolence<\/em> der Innsbrucker streiten, Landausfl\u00fcge in Form von Wanderung, Skitour oder Radfahren erfreuen sich auch heute noch gro\u00dfer Beliebtheit. Kein Wunder, Innsbruck ist von Bergen umgeben. Innerhalb weniger Minuten kann man von jedem Ort in der Stadt aus mitten im Wald stehen. Junge Menschen aus ganz Europa verbringen ihre Studienzeit zumindest zu einem Teil an der Universit\u00e4t Innsbruck, nicht nur wegen der hervorragenden Professoren und Einrichtungen, sondern auch um ihre Freizeit auf den Pisten, Mountainbikerouten und Wanderwegen zu verbringen, ohne auf urbanes Flair vermissen zu m\u00fcssen.\u00a0Das ist Fluch und Segen zugleich. Die Universit\u00e4t als gro\u00dfer Arbeitgeber und Ausbildungsort kurbelt die Wirtschaft an, gleichzeitig steigen durch ausw\u00e4rtige Studenten die Lebenserhaltungskosten in der Stadt, die zwischen den Bergen eingeklemmt nicht weiterwachsen kann.<\/p>\n What today may be perceived as a limitation to spatial growth was once a reason for growth. Innsbruck was fortunate to have access to fresh drinking water thanks to the nearby mountains. In the 15th century, the Nordkette was tapped to supply the city with drinking water. In 1485, the city council had a pipeline laid from a spring in Gramart, near today\u2019s Katzenbr\u00fcndlweg east of Hungerburg, into the city. Using larch-wood pipes up to four meters long, clean water was conducted down into the valley floor. At the Inn Bridge, the pipeline branched left and right toward Mariahilf and St. Nikolaus, and across the Inn into the old town and the Neustadt. Until this small technical masterpiece was constructed, Innsbruck\u2014like other cities\u2014had relied on groundwater from wells. This water was often stagnant and full of pathogens. Beer and wine were not considered safer everyday beverages than water without reason. While the plague could not be kept at bay permanently, typhus and cholera were less widespread than in other cities.\nNot only because of its drinking water did Innsbruck rise in the 15th century from a small trading outpost to the residence city of the Tyrolean sovereigns. The Brenner Pass is very low and allows the Alpine belt winding along Italy\u2019s northern border to be crossed relatively easily. In times before railways transported goods and people effortlessly from A to B, crossing the Alps was hard labor, and the Brenner was a welcome relief. Between 1239 and 1303, Innsbruck was the only city between \u201cMellach and Ziller\u201d in the central Inn Valley to hold the princely staple right. Within the regulated carting system, goods had to be transferred from one wagon to another here\u2014an enormous advantage for Innsbruck\u2019s economy. Innsbruck was not as wealthy as Bolzano and had no political significance until the early 15th century, but it became one of the most important transport and trading hubs in the Alpine region. The former provincial capital Merano had no long-term chance against the city on the Inn between the Brenner, Scharnitz, and Achen passes due to its isolation.\nThe Alpine location also favored tourism, which gained a foothold by the 1860s at the latest. Travelers appreciated the combination of easy accessibility, urban infrastructure, and alpine flair. With the opening up of the mountainous region by rail, visitors could travel comfortably, spend their leisure time in the mountains or in one of the spa resorts, and still enjoy the comforts of city life. Once tamed by the rails, the Alps had transformed from a source of problems into an economic asset. The era shaped by difficult agricultural conditions was over; yesterday\u2019s enemy had become a savior.<\/p>\n Alongside the mountains, rivers and springs played a crucial role in Innsbruck\u2019s development. Although the city\u2019s drinking water came from the Nordkette via a pipeline, the Inn and the Sill were responsible for sanitation. Livestock were led to the Inn to drink, laundry was washed there, and all kinds of waste\u2014including human and animal excrement\u2014were disposed of in the river. As the city began to grow during industrialization, a first landfill was created at the Sillspitz in the east of the city, later supplemented by another in the west at today\u2019s Sieglanger. More than a thousand years after Roman settlement, the Inn Valley was still a marshy landscape crisscrossed by riparian forests. Settlements such as Wilten, castles like the fortress above Amras, and roads were built some distance from the river on alluvial fans or at mid-altitude elevations. Around Innsbruck, the floodplains were used as communal land by the villages. Depending on the water level, pastureland and firewood were available, and the river could\u2014or could not\u2014be used as a transport route. Field names such as Am Gie\u00dfen in the H\u00f6tting floodplain still recall the fact that the Inn, within today\u2019s city limits, remained an untamed and only poorly cultivated wilderness until the early modern period. Flooding was a recurring consequence of the unregulated river. Between 1749 and 1789, several floods in Innsbruck claimed many lives, and the economic damage was immense. The Inn Bridge brought customs revenues into the city treasury and was the reason the settlement could develop into a city.<\/p>\n Until the road network was improved in the 16th century, heavy river traffic prevailed between Telfs, Innsbruck, and Hall. The rafts used to transport goods were flat platforms measuring up to 35 by 10 meters. Several of these vessels formed a convoy that carried all kinds of goods down the Inn to its confluence with the Danube in Passau and onward to the east. Silver, building materials, timber, salt, wheat, meat\u2014the upstream-bound convoys, hauled by horses along towpaths beside the riverbed, were the fastest way to transport large quantities of goods through the Inn Valley. The military also used the Inn for logistical support. For centuries, timber from the Upper Tyrol was floated downstream as log drives. In Hall, a timber rake at the Inn Bridge caught the valuable driftwood. Innsbruck, and especially the salt and silver mines in Hall and Schwaz, depended on this material and energy source. Near settlements and cities, fortified river engineering structures were built to tame the river at least somewhat and reduce the effects of flooding and drought. In the 18th century, the economization and scientification that affected all areas of life also promoted the cultivation of the landscape. Inspired by the spirit of the Enlightenment, efforts were undertaken to optimize the Inn as a transport route and increase the productivity of available land. The communal lands along the Inn were increasingly placed under the stewardship of individual landowners who advanced the reclamation of this alluvial terrain. The Theresian state apparatus sought to connect the vast Habsburg Empire not only by roads, but also via its major rivers. Responsibility for regulating and engineering the Inn shifted from the municipalities and the Hall saltworks to the state. Innsbruck\u2019s first chief river engineer, Franz Anton Rangger, began mapping the Inn in 1739 in order to make the river course more predictable and faster through straightening and construction works. The project of taming the river would take more than 100 years. The Napoleonic Wars delayed construction, and only after the economic hardship of the early 19th century was the state able to continue the project. Stone block dikes gradually replaced the earlier wooden structures. By the time the Inn was finally tamed, railways had replaced river shipping as the main transport route. The next major phase of river engineering came in the second half of the 20th century. The Olympic Village, the motorway, and settlements such as Sieglanger required space that had previously been reserved for the river in order to enable the postwar economic miracle.<\/p>\n Almost as important as the Inn was the smaller river that runs through Innsbruck. Where the Sill emerges from the Sill Gorge today, the Sill Canal originated, supplying the city with water. When the Counts of Andechs founded their market at the Inn Bridge in 1180, the canal already existed, as the mill of Wilten Abbey in St. Bartlm\u00e4 was already in operation. From there, it ran along what are now Karmelitergasse, Adamgasse, Salurnerstra\u00dfe, Meinhardstra\u00dfe, Sillgasse, and Ingenieur-Etzel-Stra\u00dfe to the Pradl Bridge, where it rejoined the Sill before flowing into the Inn. During construction work, sections of this walled channel are repeatedly uncovered. Initially intended primarily for fire protection, many businesses soon made use of the water flowing through this artificial canal for energy generation. The last remnants disappeared in the 1970s after bomb damage during the Second World War.<\/p>\n Innsbruck\u2019s residents were blessed not only with drinking water, the Inn as a transport route, and the energy-providing Sill Canal\u2014many springs were also said to have healing properties. As early as the Middle Ages, water from the Nordkette was used to treat various ailments. The oldest bathhouse was the Ofenloch Bath, also known as the Weinstock Bath, in the old town, where since the 13th century Innsbruck residents could relieve themselves of numerous complaints under the expert hands of the bath attendant, thanks to the miracle water of the Weinstock Spring in H\u00f6tting. The Kaiserkronen Bath in Innsbruck\u2019s Badgasse was based on this institution and used water from this spring until it closed in the 20th century. Bad Egerdach near Innsbruck has been documented as a healing spring since 1620. The spring was said to cure gout, skin diseases, anemia, and even the nervous disorder known in the 19th century as neurasthenia, considered a precursor to burnout. The bathhouse chapel still exists today opposite the SOS Children\u2019s Village. In the 18th century, a bathhouse for wounded soldiers existed in the hospital next to the Mariahilf Church, supplied with water from the H\u00f6tting Cherry Valley. The Neckelbr\u00fcnnl in M\u00fchlau was also a well-known healing spring. At the Kratzerbr\u00fcnnl on Brennerstra\u00dfe, halfway between Innsbruck and the Stefansbr\u00fccke, people followed the popular 19th-century drinking cure to detoxify the body. Innsbruck\u2019s rise as a stronghold of early alpine tourism is also due to these healing springs, which enabled an early form of wellness.<\/p>\n The final geographical ingredient in the city\u2019s success story is the broad valley basin that favored Innsbruck\u2019s development. As the city grew and its population increased, so did the demand for food. While farmers in the higher side valleys faced harsh conditions, the Inn Valley offered fertile soil and ample space for livestock farming and agriculture. Until the High Middle Ages, the Inn Valley was far more heavily forested. In the 13th century, as in many parts of Europe, the area around Innsbruck experienced early large-scale and long-term human interventions in nature for economic purposes. Contrary to common portrayals, the Middle Ages were not a primitive period of stagnation. From the 12th century onward, people no longer relied solely on prayers and divine grace to escape the effects of recurring crop failures. Innovations such as the three-field system made it possible to feed the agriculturally unproductive urban population\u2014what would be called \u201coverhead\u201d in modern terms. The reclamation of the surrounding countryside allowed the city to grow. On the slopes of the Nordkette, Innsbruck even had its own vineyards until the early 16th century, albeit with modest yields. Cities such as Schwaz, Hall, and Innsbruck could not feed themselves, and especially during the early modern mining boom, substantial food imports were necessary\u2014meat and wine in particular came from neighboring regions. Without the surrounding farmers, however, Innsbruck would not have been viable. The maize that Beda Weber already found noteworthy in Innsbruck\u2019s cityscape in 1851 is still growing vigorously today and continues to give large areas on the city\u2019s outskirts an agricultural character.<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_toggle][\/et_pb_column_inner][\/et_pb_row_inner][\/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=\"1_2\u2033 _builder_version=\"4.16\u2033 custom_padding=\"|||\" global_colors_info=\"{}\" custom_padding__hover=\"|||\"][et_pb_text admin_label=\"Overview of the city's history (do not change)\" _builder_version=\"4.24.3\u2033 text_text_color=\"#000000\u2033 header_font=\"|on|||\" header_text_align=\"centre\" header_text_color=\"#e09900\u2033 header_font_size=\"42px\" header_line_height=\"1.3em\" header_2_text_color=\"#e09900\u2033 background_color=\"rgba(255,255,255,255,0.8)\" background_layout=\"dark\" custom_padding=\"20px|20px|20px|20px|true|true\" header_font_size_last_edited=\"off|desktop\" border_radii=\"on|10px|10px|10px|10px\" box_shadow_style=\"preset1\u2033 locked=\"off\" global_colors_info=\"{}\"]<\/p>\n