Cultural experiences on a summer or winter holiday in Castelrotto.
Follow in the footsteps of the famous minstrel Oswald von Wolkenstein or discover South Tyrolean museums, customs and fabulous legends.
Oswald von Wolkenstein and his castles
The South Tyrolean nobleman Oswald von Wolkenstein is the most important minstrel of the late Middle Ages. Born around 1377 in South Tyrol, raised on the Trostburg Castle, he left his homeland at the age of ten and travelled all over Europe and the Orient. He wrote a remarkable 130 songs in the course of his 70-year life.
His lover Sabine Jäger is known from his love songs, whom he met and fell in love with at Hauenstein Castle in Siusi. After returning home from the pilgrimage to the Holy Land, the crusader found the Trostburg Castle mourning for the death of his father and the bridal chamber in Hauenstein occupied: Sabine had married a trader named Jäger. When Oswald in pain, over what Sabine had done to him, demanded a lawsuit for the ownership rights of the Wolkensteiners at Hauenstein Castle, Sabine lured her old lover into an ambush and kept Oswald in captivity at Hauenstein for years. His immortal works, dominated by infinite sadness and gloomy longing, date from this time.
After Sabine's death, Oswald took Margaretha von Schwangau as his wife, who gave him two sons and inspired them to write masterful love songs. After a turbulent life, Wolkenstein died in Merano at the age of 78 and was buried in the Novacella monastery near Bressanone.
Churches, museums and customs
The free-standing bell tower on the village square is the mighty landmark of Castelrotto. In addition to the seven chapels on the Kofel in Castelrotto, the small churches of the surrounding fractions and the many wayside shrines that hikers encounter on their walks should be mentioned.
The wintry farmer's wedding with horse-drawn sleighs and the colourful costume parade at the big summer village festival also tell of real Castelrotto customs from a bygone era. The Farmer's Museum in Sant’Osvaldo also allows us to take a trip into the busy life of farmers, where contemporary witnesses of days long bygone talk about the hard, arduous life of mountain farmers.
The school museum in Tagusa offers visitors a unique collection of furnishings and teaching objects that has been gathered over the years.
In Bolzano, the Ötzi Museum will introduce you to the 5,300-year-old ice man and tell you 15,000 years of Alpine history.
In addition to a large number of museums in South Tyrol, a wide range of interesting exhibitions takes place every year. The Trostburg Castle offers visitors a collection of models of the most important palaces and fortresses in the country.
Witches and sagas
The Alpe di Siusi and its surrounding villages are full of mythological and legendary beings. Countless good-natured but also malicious creatures haunt around. Some of them are: the herb women who conjure up the colour of dawn on the cheeks of the sick, the blessed women who have been enchanted by King Laurin in flowers and of course dwarfs, giants and "wild people". Of course, all of them are dominated by the witches, who not only but especially on the Sciliar, the witch's mountain par excellence, go wild and cause all kinds of damage in the country.
A flowery wreath of legends, ancient myths and reports, about battles against devil and witch magic blooms on our wide alpine and mighty mountain landscapes and are still told today:
Petrified haystacks: once a farmer opened haystacks on the Alpe di Siusi despite the holidays. People warned him against his outrageous practice of working on a holiday. But he was pleased with the work he had done and returned home. The next day, however, he found his beautiful haystacks transformed into stones, which you can still see today on our “Faller” meadow on the Alpe di Siusi.
