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Straddling the Adige Valley, TRENTO, just three hours from Venice by train, is a quiet provincial centre that makes one of the best bases for exploring the region, not least because of its bus services to the mountains. Overshadowed by Monte Bondone, it's beautifully sited too, encircled by mountains and exuding a relaxed pace of life.
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It wasn't always so, however. From the tenth to the eighteenth centuries, Trento was a powerful bishopric ruled by a dynasty of princes; it was the venue of the Council of Trent in the sixteenth century, when the Catholic Church, threatened by the Reformation in northern Europe, met to plan its countermeasures - meetings that spanned a total of eighteen years. Later, throughout the nineteenth century, ownership of the city, which remained in Austrian hands, was hotly contested, and it only became properly part of Italy in 1918, after the conclusion of World War I.
Trento is a bit of a posh town. The history made it a proud town, with a number of large manors outside town, where bishops used to come for holidays. Nowadays it is one of the most expensive towns in Italy, with the wealth from farming, wine, and high-tech. At Easter the fields around Trento are in bloom with apple blosoms.
 The town centre is more or less an pedestrian area, and walking around the historic centre you can see a number of outdoor fresco's on historic buildings. In former days the river Adige flowed right outside the centre where now Torre Verde is.
Apart from the council of Trento, which gathered in Trento in the sixteenth century for many periods of several years, which dominates the town centre, there is one other noteworthy historical event, related to judaism. A little boy, named Simione, died about five hunderd years ago. The event was blamed on the jews, with stories of pagan rituals. Fictional scenes are depicted on two plaqettes on via Roma. Therefore all jewish men were killed, while women and childern were expelled. The jews put a ban on Trento in return. In the 1990's relations between Trento and the jewish community improved when the Trentini stopped (officially) honouring Simione as a martyr, and the ban was lifted. A plaquette in a little alley off via Roma commemorate this occasion. |
