A City and Its Waters

Hello everyone, my name is Emanuela and I have spent most of my adult life in Bressanone, between family, school—I taught for many years—and cultural activities inspired by my irrepressible curiosity about this little corner of the world. From my childhood in the plains, I remember the damp, thick fog in winter that changed shapes and contours, mixing the colors of things. The great river that flows through the town where I was born flowed silently in times of calm, but it has caused floods that have brought death and destruction. Now it seems peaceful, but along its course it has collected the poisons of our industrial civilization and poured them into the sea for a long time.

However, the rivers of Brixen, Eisack, and Rienz flow clean and seemingly calm, each regulated by powerful embankments. In summer, the waters cool the air, while a little further upstream, towards Novacella, a small equipped beach is an excellent place to stop and recover from the heat.

To the right of the river, two hundred meters to the north, near the Maria Hilf Sanctuary, the area is called Zinggen. Here, at the end of the 19th century, a small artificial basin was created with the waters of the Eisack, forming a swimming pool used for recreation and hygiene by the Kaiserjäger, soldiers stationed in our city. In those same decades, the Eisack and Rienz rivers, which had caused disastrous floods over the centuries, were finally tamed with the creation of a gentler confluence, building the gardens desired by the then governor of Tyrol, Franz von Rapp.

Nevertheless, the waters attempted to reclaim their space, even after the major works. They flooded south of Bressanone in the 1960s, inundating the paper mill, and just a few years ago, along our itinerary, they swept away a small pedestrian bridge: the so-called Bombenbrücke collapsed and had to be replaced by the one currently in use. Just a few steps before, the waters of Bressanone, this time tamed, continue to welcome hundreds of people to the Acquarena municipal swimming pool. Here you will find it hot, cold, and even salty!

Water! It creates ice islands in winter and frozen sculptures on the branches along the banks. And then... then it flows continuously, fed for centuries to the many fountains, offering a spectacle for the eyes: it flows from the mouths of cast iron dragons under the White Tower or from the dozens of simple spouts of the oldest fountains found throughout the city. It gushes, with light but ever-changing sounds, and drips rhythmically, creating circles and circles in the basins that collect it.

In the hot hours of summer, drinking from a fountain is the most satisfying thing in the world: if you cup your hands to collect the water, cold even in summer, it freezes your fingers. Then you drink it and the coolness almost numbs your throat. If you fill your water bottle, the walls fog up from the coolness. So many fountains and so many different tastes of water. I have my favorite! What about you?