Day 5 – Taufers Castle and Brunico

Sep 29, 2022

Today’s Adventure

Today we toured the beautifully restored Castel Taufers – a classic medieval castle set high on a hillside overlooking the surrounding valley and unusually named town of Sand In Taufers below. This outing was somewhat impromptu and was also relatively easy in terms of both walking and travel. This was partially due to the rainy conditions and partially because we needed to recover from Wednesday’s big adventure to Cortina.

We started out from Innichen on a Südtirolmobil regional train headed west along the Val Pusteria to Brunico (Bruneck in German). Brunico, with a population of around 16,000, is the largest town in the valley. It consists of a historic pedestrian-only old town section mixed with modern business and even a few larger industrial firms. It’s also the gateway town for the Kronplatz ski area, so there’s no shortage of sporting goods stores and other tourist infrastructure. We got off the train at the Bruneck Nord (north) train station and then boarded a bus heading up the Val di Tures to Sand in Taufers, a.k.a. Campo Tures.

After arriving at Sand in Taufers we walked a few blocks from the bus station, crossed the river, and then headed up the trail towards the castle. It’s hard to miss the feudal Castel Taufers from the town below as the castle is in a dominant location overlooking the entire town. The castle dates back to the 16th century, but there were prominent structures associated with the Taufers family on this site for hundreds of years before that. It’s been owned and managed (along with the Trostburg Castle south of Brixen) by the Südtiroler Burgeninstitut or South Tyrolean Castles Association since 1977. They’ve done a wonderful job of restoring this historic treasure and making it available for the public.

The castle is well-maintained and furnished, so we opted to take a guided tour instead of just wandering around as usual. They only offered the tours in Italian and German as this site is somewhat off the beaten path, so we opted for the Italian version as we were told that it would be the smaller group – and indeed it was. We had a tour sheet printed in English, but they didn’t include any hints as to when the tour guide was going to say anything witty and we were expected to laugh. Notwithstanding the language barrier it was a worthwhile tour as we got to see a number of rooms within the castle that weren’t otherwise open to the public.

After the tour we ambled back down the trail into town to locate our lunch destination for the day, the Pizzeria Rosmarin. This was yet another of Cindy’s excellent finds from her internet research – the on-line reviews rarely steered us wrong on this trip. Contrary to the somewhat pedestrian connotation of ‘pizzeria’ in the US we found that very often Italian pizzerias are very nice restaurants, in the case ofthe Pizzeria Rosmarin complete with linen tablecloths and napkins at lunchtime. We ordered a wood-fired pizza topped with speck, chanterelles, and porcini mushrooms. We think that this may also have been the first time that we ran across a bottle of chili pepper infused olive oil as a condiment – we enjoyed it so much that upon our return to the States it has become a staple for us on pizza and pasta.

After finishing our lunch we took the bus back to Hauptbahnhof in Bruneck. The rain was holding off at that moment, so we headed off on a walking tour of the old town pedestrian zone. We also looped up around the grounds of Bruneck Castle, which had a gift shop offering all kinds of local souvenirs including speck-flavored gin! The castle unsurprisingly sits on a strategic knoll overlooking the town so we we able get nice elevated views of both the Church of the Assumption of Mary (with its signature twin spires) and the Chiesa di Santa Caterina (with the region’s classic mushroom dome).

At this point it was starting to rain lightly so we made a run for the train station and caught the train back to Innichen. After a quick pass through the Despar grocery store we finished the day back in the room with yet another of Cindy’s excellent home made dinners.”

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