Innichen

The first stop for this year’s four week winter adventure in the Alps was the delightful town of Innichen, Italy, also known as San Candido in Italian or Sanciana in the regional Ladin dialect.  Innichen lies in a dramatic setting on the floor of the Val Pusteria, which runs eastward from Fortezza all the way to the Austrian border.  Innichen is actually located just a few miles from Austria and in pre-EU times was the site of an important border crossing.

History runs deep here with the earliest settlements believed to date back as far as 1000 BC.  The two main churches are decidedly newer, but even those are impressively old by American standards.  The cathedral of San Candido, also referred to as the La Collegiata di San Candido, dates to the middle of the 12th century.  Its blockish Romanesque architecture is quite foreboding and is very much in contrast with the dramatic Baroque styling of the Chiesa di San Michele, ca. 1735.   San Michele is especially hard to miss with the gold gilt statues on the facade facing the town square.  Both churches have stunning (albeit very different) interiors and are well worth a visit.

This is not to say that everything in the area is old; in fact Innichen partnered with the neighboring town of Dobbiaco to make a very modern (and award-winning) investment in renewable energy.  The two towns are now served by a shared centralized heating plant that burns waste products from the wood and timber industry to generate electricity for the grid as well as steam for use in heating nearby homes and businesses.  In a clever twist, even the spent steam is run through heat exchangers to produce domestic hot water.

As with the rest of Südtirol, this region was actually part of Austria until immediately after World War I when it was granted to Italy as part of Austria’s war reparations.  Even a century later the people, language, architecture, and food found here are still very much Germanic – as a matter of fact the 2011 census reported that 85% of the population still spoke German as their first language.

Our usual strategy for travel from Williamsburg to Innichen is a flight to Atlanta from Richmond, a flight to Munich from Atlanta, and then a combination of intercity and regional trains headed south into the Dolomites – all told something just over 24 hours from door to door.   We made a minor change this time around – instead of using trains for the final leg of the journey from Munich we opted to use a shuttle service that picked us up at the airport and dropped us directly at our hotel in Innichen.  This was a surprisingly reasonable option and very convenient as we were carrying a long ski bag in addition to our backpacks and roller duffels.

Innichen was a great location for us given that we relied, as usual, on buses and trains to get around.  The town’s Bahnhof gave us regional train access and there were also good bus connections, all just a short walk (about two blocks) from our apartment.  Staying in Innichen enabled us to visit nearby favorites as well as several new locations.  Read our blog below for more details about our adventures.

This was our third time staying in Innichen and our fourth visit overall.  We initially scoped out the town in January of 2020 when we spent twelve days just down the road in Dobbiaco.   We then spent a full week in Innichen during our epic five week “revenge travel” tour of the Dolomites in the fall of 2022.  We liked that visit so much we returned for two more weeks of winter fun in February of 2023.  As a result of these prior visits we were confident that Innichen would work well this time around.  Innichen met all of our expectations, as usual, so we hope to return soon!