We left Brescia to head to our next stop, Trento, a medieval city that is nestled amongst beautiful mountains in the Tyrol region of northern Italy. Our apartment here is nestled between the vineyards and extremely quiet which has been lovely.

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On our first day we decided to walk DOWN to the Old Town, only a 20 minute walk but quite steep. Our first stop was the stunning Piazza Duomo for a well earned coffee. The Duomo was built between the 11th and 13th centuries and in the centre of the piazza stands the Fountain of Neptune.

Cazzuffi-Rella are 2 historic buildings surrounding the Piazza Duomo. They date back to the 16th century and the frescoes were amazing.

The Church of Santa Maria Maggiore was built in the early 16th century and the interior was amazing with its beautiful frescoes ceiling.

Palazzo Geremia is considered one of the first examples of Renaissance architecture in Trento and was built as a private residence between the 15th and 16th century. We loved the frescoed facade. The Palazzo Thun now the Town Hall was the residence of the Thun family for 400 years and their Coat of Arms still stands proudly on the facade.

As with every old town we have visited, every corner you walk around there stands another church. Are you sick of them yet? This one is the 16th century Church of St Francis Xavier. Parts of the Old city wall still remain and date back to the 13th century.

Trento has many towers. The Torre Civica was built in the mid 12th century to protect the residences of the Duomo and has even served as a prison. The Torre Vanga was built in the 13th century by the Bishop of Vanga and served as a defensive tower and later again as a prison. Glad to see they were put to good use.

Trento sits on the Adige River and we couldn’t resist this little snap of the 14th century Church of St Apollinaris.

After our day of sightseeing we decided to walk back UPHILL to our apartment. We decided that 35 euros for an Uber fare was outrageous! In Greg’s words once we arrived home we were “cooked”. We had walked just over 10 kms, nearly 13500 steps and climbed 22 floors according to the Ap on the phone! Never again. For the rest of this week, we have found a free car park and driven both up and down! Much better!👍

We took the cable car up the Sardagna Hill to get a Birds Eye view of the city. It had just celebrated its 100 years of operation! We don’t think it has changed much!😂 We had a good view of the Trento Castello but more on that later.

We decided to take Harley for a drive into the mountains. The many hillsides covered in vineyards was very picturesque.

Our first stop for coffee was the small town of Bressanone. It’s Cathedral, built in the 18th century was noted for its 200 square metre ceiling frescos!

The historic older Casa St Michael stands next to the Cathedral and agin another stunning interior.

Our next stop was the gorgeous but slightly touristy town of Vipiteno. We were very close to the Austrian border so everything became a little Germanic including the wonderful buildings. The Tower of the Twelve separates the old and new town and named because the bell only chimes at 12 noon and was used in the old times “ to call the citizens in for lunch”.

Then we started to climb up the Saufenpass, a high mountain pass up into the Alps. It was 40 kms long, it had 20 hairpin bends up and down and climbed to 2075 meters. The Maria Heimsuchung Chapel sits at the summit.

We were getting hungry by this time and found a Gasthaus with a view for lunch. On offer was roast deer with red cabbage and spatzle and canederli, or dumplings which is a typical Trentino dish. Both were delicious and how we fitted in the Apple strudel we will never know!

Now back to the Trento castle or the Castello del Buonconsiglio! It was built as a fortress in the mid 13th century and served as the residence of the Prince-Bishops of Trento from the 13th century until the Napoleonic era.

The interior was richly adorned with many frescoes both on the walls and the ceilings.

The frescoes in the Bishops Hall summarized the history of the castle between 1027 and 1803 with portraits of all the Prince Bishops .

It was an amazingly huge building however for us, a lot of the rooms were used for art exhibitions which took away from the grandeur of the architecture.

We had planned another trip to the mountains however the rain has derailed that plan! We decided to do lunch instead. We went to Lake Caldonazza, only a 15minute drive from home and had a lovely lake side pizza lunch washed down with a couple glasses of local Pinot Grigio,

So our week in Trento has come to an end. Tomorrow we move onto Stresa on Lake Maggiore for our final 3 nights.

one more short blog to come…..maybe more churches….who knows😂

Both Greg and Harley are over their little altercation.

Greg’s knee is still holding up surprisingly well, only a few more days to go🤞

Ciao ciao

see you all soon

Lots of love

Greg and Rhonda