Innichen

San Candido, Innichen in German, sits at 1,175 meters in the Alta Pusteria valley near the Austrian border, about forty kilometers west of Lienz and close to the headwaters of the Drava river. The town was founded as a Benedictine monastery in 769 by Duke Tassilo III of Bavaria, charged with the Christianisation of the Slavic populations of the eastern Alps. The monastery was turned into a college of canons in 1143, which is the founding date of the collegiate church that still stands at the center of the town today. The town is bilingual, German first and Italian second; the Italian name San Candido, after the co-patron of the collegiate church, is recorded from 1870, well before the post-1918 renaming of South Tyrol.

The old town, laid out along the Pusteria road with its squares and burgher houses, sits at the foot of the slope that rises directly into the Monte Baranci ski area, so the built center and the mountain terrain meet with almost no transition. To the south the Drei Zinnen, the Tre Cime di Lavaredo, mark one of the most photographed silhouettes in the Dolomites, with Innichen serving as the road, rail and trailhead base for reaching them through Sesto and Auronzo. East, the valley opens toward the Drava river and Austria, followed for its whole length by the cycle path to Lienz. The town works because of this arrangement: a monastic and Romanesque core, a wall of Dolomite peaks to the south, and open riverine access to Austria to the east, three directions of identity meeting at a single, small, bilingual place.

From Treviso (TSF), about 2 h 17 min by car.

Verona (VRN) is about 3 h 20 min away.

By car from the center of Bolzano 1 h 41 min, Trento 2 h 13 min or Udine 2 h 24 min.

There is a railway station in the comune, so you can arrive without a car.

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